Eight days in the American Southwest: three canyons, one hire car, and nothing green

Collect the car tomorrow, not today. The first evening is a walk, and the Strip after dark is the correct opening to a week that will be entirely silent afterwards.

The fountains at the Bellagio are free, run on a quarter-hour cycle once it is properly dark, and are the best piece of spectacle in the city. Watch them twice, from the pavement and then from higher up in the arcade opposite.

The observation wheel behind the Flamingo is 550 feet high and takes half an hour to go round, and it is the only way to see how completely this city stops at its edges: four miles of light, then desert in every direction.

Eat one street back on Spring Mountain Road, which is Chinatown and is better than anything on the Strip at twice the price.

About 140 miles northeast on the interstate, two and a half hours, and the landscape changes twice on the way. Leave early enough to be in the park by early afternoon.

Come in by the east entrance if you can, because that puts you on the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, which is the best introduction the park has. Ten miles of switchbacks and slickrock, past a sandstone dome cross-hatched by wind and frost into a grid, ending in a mile-long tunnel blasted through the cliff in 1930 with galleries opening onto the canyon. Large vehicles need an escort through it and the traffic stops both ways while they pass.

Just past the eastern end of the tunnel, a short steep trail climbs to Canyon Overlook, which takes an hour there and back and gives you the whole of lower Zion Canyon from above. Do it now, in the afternoon light, because it is the best hour-for-hour view in the park.

Then down into Springdale, check in, and take the shuttle back up to the visitor centre in the evening to work out tomorrow.

Cars are banned on the canyon road from spring to autumn, so the day runs on the shuttle, which starts before seven and is busy by nine. Be on an early one.

Ride to the last stop, the Temple of Sinawava, and walk the Riverside Walk: a mile of flat paved path along the Virgin River with the walls closing in the whole way. At the end the path stops and the river becomes the trail. That is the Narrows, and going even half a mile up it, wading in ankle to knee deep water between walls twenty feet apart, is the single best thing on this route. Hire boots and a stick in Springdale the evening before; check the flow rate and the flash flood forecast at the visitor centre in the morning.

Come back down mid afternoon and stop at the Zion Lodge for the Emerald Pools. The lower pool is a half hour on a paved trail to a dripping alcove behind a waterfall; the upper pool is another steep half hour and worth it if the legs are still working.

Finish at the Court of the Patriarchs, which is a two minute walk from a shuttle stop to a viewpoint of three sandstone peaks named by a Methodist minister in 1916. Then the shuttle back and dinner in Springdale.

Fifty-five miles northeast, about ninety minutes, climbing the whole way. Zion's canyon floor sits at 4,000 feet and you finish the drive four thousand higher, so pack a jumper even in July; the difference is about ten degrees.

Arrive around lunchtime and drive straight to the far southern end of the amphitheatre. Bryce Point is a promontory sticking out into the bowl with the whole field of spires below and behind it, and it is the most dramatic of the overlooks by some way.

Inspiration Point is a few minutes north and comes in three tiers, each a short climb above the last. The top one is exposed, windy and shows the sheer density of the hoodoos better than anywhere else in the park.

Finish at Sunset Point, which despite the name is best in the late afternoon rather than at the moment the sun goes, and which is where tomorrow's descent starts. Then eat early, because tomorrow starts in the dark.

Get up in the dark. The whole geometry of Bryce is built for it: the amphitheatre faces east, the sun comes over the rim behind you and lights the spires from the top down, and for about twenty minutes the orange goes almost fluorescent.

After breakfast, drive the length of the park road, which climbs another thousand feet to its far end. Rainbow Point sits at 9,100 feet in a forest of bristlecone pine and looks out over a different landscape again, with the Grand Staircase stepping away south towards Arizona. The dozen overlooks on the way back are each a two minute walk from the car.

Then walk down into the amphitheatre, which is the difference between looking at Bryce and being in it. The trail drops off Sunset Point through a set of switchbacks called Wall Street, a slot between two hundred foot walls with Douglas firs growing out of the floor, and comes back up to Sunrise Point through the Queen's Garden. Three miles, about two hours, and slower than it looks because of the thin air.

In the late afternoon, drive ten minutes outside the park to Mossy Cave, an easy half hour along a creek to a dripping alcove and a small waterfall, which is the only trail here that goes up to the hoodoos rather than down through them.

Two hundred and forty miles today, about four hours with stops, south across the Kaibab plateau and through a long stretch of nothing. Fill the tank in Kanab or Page before you commit to it, because there is very little between.

Come into the park by the east entrance rather than the south. That gets you Desert View, which is where most people get their first sight of the canyon and is the right way to get it: the Colorado is actually visible from here, which it is not from most of the rim, and the Watchtower beside it is a 70 foot stone tower built in 1932 by Mary Colter, modelled on Ancestral Puebloan structures and painted inside by a Hopi artist.

Then 25 miles west along the rim road to the village. Check in, drop the bags, and get straight back out.

The Rim Trail is paved, mostly flat and runs thirteen miles along the edge, with shuttle stops all the way so you can walk one section and ride back. Do the stretch west of the village in the last hour of light, when the buttes below start throwing shadows at each other.

The one full day at the canyon, and the only real decision is how far down to go.

The Bright Angel Trail starts beside the lodge and drops in switchbacks off the rim. The rest houses at a mile and a half and three miles are the sensible turnaround points; the river is nine and a half miles down and is a two-day trip, not a day hike, and the rangers will tell you the same thing in stronger terms. Whatever you choose, remember that the walk back is uphill in the afternoon heat and takes roughly twice as long as the descent.

Come up by late morning and spend the middle of the day in the village, which is more interesting than it sounds. Hopi House opened in 1905 and there is a second Colter building a little further along that hangs out over the rim, and she spent forty years putting up things here that look older than they are.

In the afternoon take the shuttle west along Hermit Road, which is closed to cars for most of the year and runs seven miles to Hermit's Rest, another Colter building with a huge stone fireplace. The viewpoints along it are the best on the South Rim and the last of them faces the sunset.

Eat at the old hotel on the rim if you booked, which requires having done so weeks ago.

Sunrise on the rim before anything else. Walk east from the village along the Trail of Time, which is a paved path with the canyon's rock layers laid out along it as a timeline, one metre to a million years. The light comes in horizontally, the buttes below separate out from each other, and the far rim is eighteen miles away and looks like weather.

Then the drive. Flagstaff is 80 miles south and about ninety minutes, with an airport and a very pleasant old downtown. Phoenix is three and a half hours and has the flights. Las Vegas is four and a half hours west, which is the cost of not paying a one-way car fee.

Whichever you choose, the first hour out is high ponderosa forest, which is the last thing anybody expects to be driving through after a week of desert.