| 10 cycling days | 713 km | 8204 m ascent | 2 National Parks |
We left the city of Page and cycled over the Glen Canyon Dam. The weather continued to be nice and warm and our rain gear sank deeper and deeper into our bags. Our next stop: Buckskin Gulch, a beautiful slot canyon with red walls. In contrary to the Antilope Canyon, which is bigger and more popular, but at the same time very expensive, this one was open to anyone for just a few dollars. We pitched our tent at the adjacent (free!) campsite to make sure we got a spot and went back to the trailhead. We were a bit too late for seeing the colors really shine in daylight, but it was still impressive! And our first experience in a canyon like this. We wandered around for some time and made it back before it got fully dark.
On our way back to the main road the next day, we stopped at a fun roadside “attraction” I had spotted on a map the day before. Barely visible from the street, but accessible by a short walk, were stacks of once beautiful, old cars. I later found out that those stacks were deliberately engineered, serving as a cheap alternative to other materials for erosion control.
The Cottonwood Canyon road should bring us straight to Bryce Canyon. The 74 km long gravel road was officially closed because of washouts after severe rain a few days earlier. We assumed we should be fine on our bikes and as the alternative would be a massive detour, we didn’t have to think twice. A few kilometers in, a car came from the other side and the driver ensured us that we’ll easily come through. He even invited us to his place in Phoenix, but unfortunately we won’t travel through there.
We once again found ourselves on our own in the middle of a beautiful landscape. We were cycling through the “Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument”, with many different rock layers in various colors, canyons and several national parks.
When we rolled back onto pavement the following day, a Swiss truck went past right in front of us and we recognized Manu and Thiago that we had just met the other week! I sent them a message and we arranged to stay on the same campsite at Bryce Canyon National Park the day after. Sebi and I continued all the way to Bryce Canon. It was quite hot and at some point I said that I would really need a cold drink that night, anything else than water. A few minutes later, I found three unopened bottles of coke on the side of the road – they must have fallen off a car! Needless to say, I happily stashed them in my saddle bag. We got to the campsite, pitched our tent and cycled to the sunset viewpoint for dinner. The view from there was spectacular. We stayed until it got dark and Sebi took some pictures with hoodoos under the night sky.
The next morning, we returned to the viewpoint, parked our bikes and went for a hike in the canyon. We combined parts of the Navajo Loop and the Queens Garden Hike and the scenery changed so often! From steep, red-orange canyons to open forest and white rocks. Hiking down into the canyon inevitably meant having to hike back up at some point and we were happy once we made it back to the start. Sebi returned to the campsite and I cycled to a few more viewpoints along the Bryce Canyon road. When I got back to the campsite, our new Swiss friends were already there and we spent the rest of the evening at their campsite, engaged in beautiful conversations.
While saying good-bye to Manu and Thiago the next morning, they got approached by a couple from the US. They live part of the year in Alaska and the other part of the year in Utah. When they learned how we travel, they invited us to their place and we announced ourselves for a few days later. Funnily enough it was right next to the route we had planned! Over the following two days, we cycled towards Zion national park. Right before the descent into the park is a tunnel, where cyclists are strictly forbidden. As there isn’t an official shuttle service, we had to find somebody willing to give us a ride through. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long until a friendly couple told us to hop on the back of their pickup truck. Yes, the bikes and us went on the bed of the truck! As you know, that wasn’t the first time somebody transported us like that, but it doesn’t necessarily feel safer the more often you need to do it… They dropped us off right after the tunnel and we enjoyed a beautiful downhill into Zion. We were reunited with Kris, one of the cyclists that we had met in Yellowstone. He was staying at the same campground for a few days with a friend of his and generously offered to share his spot. As the campground was fully booked and we were only able to get a spot for one of the two nights, we gratefully accepted his offer.
The Narrows Hike – Zion National Park:
This is by far one of the coolest things we have done on this trip. Located in the Zion National Park are “the Narrows”, the narrowest section of the Zion Canyon. The walls are several hundred meters high, but the canyon less than ten meters at its narrowest sections. It’s possible to hike into the canyon, and the Virgin River that flows through it, is the trail. The water depth varies and can be as deep as chest height. When the flow is too strong, the trail gets closed.
As the water was already quite cold when we were there, we decided to rent neoprene socks, water shoes and dry bibs. Unfortunately, we had to change from our camp spot to another one that day. We needed to leave so early in the morning that the other one wasn’t vacant yet and had to pack up everything as normal. We rented a locker for our bags and valuables, locked the bikes at the campsite and took the shuttle bus to the trail head. Fully equipped with our water shoes, dry bibs and long wooden stick, we entered the canyon. The water was everything from ankle deep to belly deep, sometimes it was possible to walk on sand next to the river. We hiked into the canyon for several hours, before we turned around to make it back in time. The canyon walls were so high! The water pressed against the legs, but with the dry bibs, everything stayed dry which felt a little bit like magic. We took lots of pictures and to this day I am still impressed that none of us had dropped any electronics into the water. A few crazy people hiked without dry bibs or neoprene gear, only with sandals or crocs.. Sebi and I got cold feet just watching it! After seven hours, we were back at the trail head, tired and happy. We returned the rental gear and spent the rest of the evening with Kris and his friend at their campsite.
From Zion National Park it was only one day of cycling to the couple that invited us to their place when we met in Bryce. It was a hot day and our lunch break took a lot longer than usual. When cycling through St. George, we were impressed with the amount of bike lanes – nearly every road had one! Everywhere were cacti and palm trees. We arrived at their place just after sunset and were so amazed by the landscape. Lots of flat, low-profile houses nestled into the desert, with cacti and Joshua trees all around. They welcomed us with open arms and we were once again incredibly grateful for the hospitality. We ended up taking two days off-bike. Sebi did a lot of maintenance and seized the opportunity to be able to use a sewing machine. I worked on the blog and got a ride to the supermarket. Nice to do the shopping with a car for a change! One evening we even got to use the hot tub, with views of the night sky and Joshua trees.
Three more days of cycling and we would be in Las Vegas. I really wanted to see the city, although I would never fly there to go there. Now it was basically on our way! We said good-bye to our lovely hosts and had a beautiful day of riding – uphill, downhill, Joshua trees – until we turned onto a dirt track in the afternoon. Road options were limited and that dirt track was the only alternative to the super busy, dangerous and maybe even prohibited Interstate highway. Unfortunately though, the track was incredibly sandy and we pushed at least 90% of the first 15 km. It got dark, it was a lot of uphill and we had no idea when the track would get better. We kept pushing until we reached the top of a plateau and felt like we had gotten through the worst part. It was well after 10 p.m. when we finally pitched our tent somewhere next to the track.
Thankfully, the next day the track got better faster than expected and we were back on smooth-rolling gravel and pavement. We saw more and more different cacti and found lots of stuff next to the road, a broken iPod classic and cassettes among other things. One last night of wild camping outside of Las Vegas, before we cycled into the city of superlatives. The weather was incredible and we waited until we found a place in the shade until we stopped for lunch. Las Vegas had way more cycling lanes than expected, but at the same time a lot of road works and the dreaded city cycling was nearly as exhausting as feared. At some point, a car slows down when approaching us and the driver waved enthusiastically at us. It took us a moment to recognize the person – it was Tristan, in a rental car! The Canadian cyclist we had last seen when we were all hiding from the thunderstorms at a visitor center. So funny. Obviously amused to be on the other side of things for the day, he asked us if we needed some water or snacks.
We arrived at the motel and parked our bikes in the rooms. We could see the sphere from our window! All craziness aside, it is quite the impressive building. We decided to go out for dinner and took the monorail into the center of craziness. We stepped right into Paris, Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in front of us. Little fun fact: That was the second fake Eiffel Tower I saw and I have never seen the real one! We watched a few fountain shows in front of the Bellagio Casino and slowly made our way back to our motel. We learned pretty fast that the casinos were so accessible that you’d inevitably needed to walk through one to get to where you wanna go. Two weeks later, the Formula 1 Grand Prix would take place and everything seemed to be slightly more chaotic than usual, with sidewalks closed and concrete barriers already in place.
We stayed in Vegas for a few days. I read online that some casinos offer free gambling lessons in popular games like Craps and Black Jack. We went to a lesson of Craps and were absolutely clueless for at least 50 of the 60 minutes! It did make some sense in the end though and looked quite fun, but we never played at a table. It seemed way too fast and the minimum bets were way too high! We tried some machines though and had a ton of fun, we even left with a small profit despite our ridiculously low combined-gambling-budget.
We walked through the Venetian Casino and saw the impressive copy of Venice. It had everything, the Canals complete with small boats, the Plaza San Marco and even a fake-blue-sky ceiling. Manu and Thiago happened to be in Las Vegas at the same time and we spent a whole afternoon together. It’s so cool to see them so often! Usually, when we meet other people, we don’t get to see them again, or not that fast.
Except for the main area on the strip, a lot of buildings and casinos looked quite run-down. We also spent so much time walking. Although everything looked close on the map, walking anywhere took almost forever and having to change sides of the road and being guided through casinos didn’t make it faster at all.
One day was almost entirely spent on planning and organizing. We wouldn’t be in the US for that much longer and we needed to replace/buy everything we needed before crossing into Mexico. Ordering online and general availability of things would be a lot worse from there on. We organized a warm showers host in Palm Springs for the upcoming week, ordered a few things to his place and replanned our whole route from Las Vegas to Mexico. Originally, we wanted to cycle through Death Valley and from there to the Coast and south to San Diego. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t look good at all. Not that we’d be afraid of some rain, but the flash flood warnings in a desert area like this should really be taken seriously. We postponed our initial departure out of Las Vegas for two days and moved from the motel to a warm showers host for the last two nights.
Published on January 14, 2026
Experienced from 29.10. – 15.11. 2025
