And so the adventure begins. The months of planning have flown by in the blink of an eye and departure day dawns, it seems as though Summer has not finished its beneficent work just yet.

It is often said that the best conceived plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy, and so it would appear, an unexpected phone call advised that our return flight would be to Heathrow instead of Gatwick as planned. Ah well! We have left our “Angry Eyes” at home and the adventure glass is always half full, so a hasty rehash of travel arrangements and we are good to go.

The 10 hour flight passed surprisingly quickly thanks to an endless succession of airline food and drink trollies (who knew a steak pasty was an acceptable afternoon snack and a blackcurrent flavoured Fisherman's Friend was an integral part of ‘afternoon tea’).

A “binge watch” of the Harry Bosch TV series saw the miles fly by…it was probably just as well that “Breaking Bad” was not available, I might have “missed my stop”.

At times like this I rather wish that the boffins would direct their energy into developing a ‘Star Trek’ transporter...”Beam me up Scotty”!

Las Vegas is a quite surreal city, gaudy and brash certainly, but also exerting a strangely magnetic attraction. Perhaps it is because I am reminded at every turn of a lyric from a Brandon Flowers song (in itself no bad thing).

Our stay in ”Sin City” is short, long enough to pick up the rental car and head 80 miles North East along Interstate 15 to our bed for the night.

A 90 minute drive through the brush and Joshua Trees of the Mojave Desert brought us to our destination, an overnight stop in Mesquite, Nevada, a city founded by Mormon Pioneers in 1880...nobody knows why, perhaps they too simply wanted to escape the crowds and heat of weekend Las Vegas.

Jet lag plays its usual games, I sit here in the hotel lobby posting this blog, the clock tells me it is 03:30 but my brain is telling me it is 11:30 and I should be up and busy…I always like to make a start on the day before somebody comes along and spoils it but come on, there are limits!

An early start due to jet lag and dawn begins to break. It’s too early for breakfast and first light is often a magical time to take photographs. The surrounding mountains take on an ethereal quality and show colours not seen once the sun makes its appearance.

Once breakfast is complete we decide to move on to our next stop Zion National Park in Utah.