2012 - America, Roadtrip from Houston to Las Vegas.

Early 2012 we did fly from Amsterdam to Houston.

Houston is the city of the NASA, so we did visit the Johnson Space Center. There you can see a lot, like all over the manned space travels, specially the Apollo journey to the moon. You can see an Apollo Saturn rocket with the story about Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the moon with Neil Armstrong, who died on August 25, 2012.

From Houston we drove to Dallas, known as the city where John F Kennedy was murdered. We did visit the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza given by the city of Dallas. And of course also visit the place of the JFK murder, Dealey Plaza/Elm Street and the 6th floor museum in the former Texas School Book Depository.

After Dallas we drove further to San Antonio where we did walk along both sides of the river sidewalk in the center. At some place it was able to cross the river over the nice arch bridges. There were also a lot of restaurant along the river, were we also did enjoy some evening meals. But in this city we also visit the Alamo.The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution.

Then we did travel via van Horn and the caves of CarlsBad National Park, to El Paso, at the Mexican border. The bridges over the Rio Grande were a way to pass the border. We made a self-guided walking tour to the old city, where we could see remarkable and important old buildings.

Via an overnight stay in Las Cruses we went to the cableway of Albuquerque. On top of the mountain there where even some places with old snow.

We did also visit the famous city Santa Fe and on the way back home we did drive through the city of Madrid, known from the hilarious movie "Wild Hogs". The next day we went to the "Old Town" to see the buildings over there.

Our next motel was in Gallup. From Gallup we drove via the "Painted Dessert", with his colorful landscape, and after that we drive through "Petrified Forest", where you can see many petrified trunks. After a further nice drive though the beautiful nature, we did arrive in Flagstaff.

From there we did drive through the "Oak Creek" National Park and to the city Sedona, a very nice city where we did some walking.

The next day we did visit "Grand Canyon". Also for the second time, it was amazing to see it again. This time we did walk somewhat longer along the rim. At the end we did take the bus back to the parking lot.

After this we did travel toPage, via "Monument Valley" National Park. Here we did see the famous "Buds", known from many pictures.

From Page we drove to the city Kanab where the Little Hollywood Movie Museum was, with old western decors. We did arrive at the end of the day in Tropic.

That night it did snow a lot, and because we didn’t have an ice scraper, we did remove all the snow from the car with some old papers.

After done the cleaning, we did visit the "Bryce Canyon" National Park, but there was still snow falling down and the sighting was not so good.

After that visit, we did drive through "Zion" National Park to the city of Huricane. The next morning we did go by shuttle to and through the "Zion Canyon". The last few hundred meters we did walk, until the point where you could no go further without special equipment.

After this we did drive to Las Vegas, and from there we did visit also the "Hoover dam".

Our last days in Vegas we did visit the Strip, Fremont Street Experience and a few large shopping centers.

Pictures of our roundtrip from Houston to Las Vegas.

Click on a picture to see a bigger image.