The weather here is still fairly mild. Only two frosts, not a hint of snow, and plenty of days have been sunny and warmed up well into the mid-teens. It feels more like early October than early November.

Halloween has come and gone again, and already Christmas lights are starting to show up. The farm continues to run on its regular schedule. So in the absence of anything else interesting to report here, I'll continue with my summer trip in the U.S.

Five days later than I expected, I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Not at the regular viewing platform, which was closed for repairs, but along one of the hiking trails. It was packed with tourists, mostly Californians by the number plates of the cars in the carpark. But there was no shortage of international visitors, and I heard half a dozen languages spoken in a few minutes. The odd daring photographer crept out onto one of the rocky heels thrust out into the void, but most simply milled around the trees.

There isn't all that much to say about the Canyon. It is certainly grand. Still, it was a view that would have been better-appreciated emerging out of the trees after a long and difficult hike. Standing on a sealed path with two hundred other people felt a bit like watching it all on TV.

I found the views a lot more interesting from the highway going east, however. In particular, I really liked Desert View, a quiet little place with panoramic views from a little watchtower. It was decorated with Navajo artwork, although there was no information that I could find on who had built it or why. I suspect it might have been for the benefit of tourists. Still, the top of the tower was at over 7,500 feet - the highest point on the Canyon's South Rim - and you could look both down the Canyon and out over the plains to the east. Driving down, I really liked the view of the flat grassland, stretching over fifty miles away into Utah, carved by the deep tributaries of the Grand Canyon. It was an impressive landscape, I thought, more impressive than the Canyon itself.

The rest of northern Arizona was noteworthy for the little stalls the Navajo had set up beside the road, selling jewelry and other trinkets. They seemed to have a fondness for flags - not only American and Arizonan, but from all over the world. One stand flew a Canadian flag, and another an Australian. One big hand-painted sign read 'NICE INDIANS!', as if the Navajo felt the need to assure passing tourists that the whole thing wasn't a scam to draw them off the freeway so that they could be tomahawked to death.

We passed a few native settlements. The Navajo didn't seem to be doing too badly, but across the U.S. and Canada and Australia places like that are always something that make you doubt that you're still in a first-world country.

East of the Grand Canyon, though, the traffic thinned out a lot. In particular, I'd finally left the Californian drivers behind, and the roads felt far more relaxing as a result. The land was also more remote - towns were fewer, and those that I did drive through were smaller. Tuba City, for example, was perhaps the most inappropriate use of the word 'city' I've ever seen. For a while I wasn't even sure what state I was in - the signs of state and U.S. highways have silhouettes of their state on them, but out here all the states are kind of square and it could be hard to tell which one it was just by glancing at them. And there weren't many other clues. There were quite a few hitch-hikers, all of whom I'd be willing to guess were native.

The scenery was initially kind of flat and boring - it must be acknowledged that Arizona is a fairly dull state to drive across from one side to the other. But as I went on it became ever-changing - belts of flat prairie cut through by red canyons and yellowish badlands. The red rock always seemed rough and layered, as if it had been eroded by wind, while the yellow was smooth, like it had been eroded by water.

It occurred to me that I had driven across the entire south-western United States and not once eaten Mexican food, so I resolved to correct that. In the late afternoon I reached the junction with Highway 191, at Kayenta. I was resolved to get into Utah that night, but I was hungry and I saw a sign advertising a little Mexican restaurant just off the highway so I stopped. They had a special where you could get a bit of everything, which suited me fine, and the food was very good. At least as far as I could tell - they insisted on starting the meal with some salsa so hot that I couldn't taste it as well as I'd have liked and needed three glasses of water.

North of Kayenta I drove through one of the most interesting parts of the trip - Monument Valley. I'd never heard of it, and only found out that it was a place of some significance when I looked on the map, curious about the odd-looking towering stone spires I could see. It was a Tolkienesque landscape of huge stone structures, carved into lurid and unnatural shapes by the weather, rising over a flat grassland ringed by low cliffs. They looked extremely interesting in the failing light, first red in the sunset then dark against the twilight sky. For my money, Monument Valley was a far more impressive place than the Grand Canyon, which is the beauty of a trip like this - you stumble on things that you've never heard of but can leave a lasting impression.

Midway through Monument Valley, as night had fallen, I passed the visitor centre and a few other buildings and suddenly the mile markers beside the highway went back to '1'. I was in Utah. I was now more or less alone on a dark road. It felt fairly good, actually - it was the first time I'd had a road to myself since I entered the United States.

Still, I wasn't keen to drive much further and stopped at a motel in Mexican Hat, Utah. I later found out that the town owes its name to the stone monolith just outside it, that resembles a sombrero precariously balanced on a rock spire. I checked into an overpriced motel. I didn't have all that much choice - the place made Kingman seem like a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis. I was definitely in one of the more remote areas of the Lower 48 States.

I was excited about being in Utah because the State was, for me, a blank slate. I knew of no towns beyond Salt Lake City and Moab (where I'd originally booked a room), and had no idea what it looked like. Desert? Mountains? I was curious to find out. My car had picked up a squealing noise at low speed, though, so I was a little worried. Plus the drive from Mexican Hat to Boulder is a long one. But I was ready to go the next morning in good time.