Just six days until Louisa and I board a plane to Los Angeles and then to Phoenix, Arizona. I am attending a conference in Phoenix before Louisa and I grab a hire car and road trip to Sedona, Arizona; the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; Laughlin, Nevada; and finally to Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

Just as Ollie and I took a mother-and-son trip to England, Denmark and the Netherlands in 2013 when he was 8-years-old, Louisa and I are doing a mother-and-daughter trip now she is 8.

We are planning to hire an electric bike in Phoenix for a sunset tour of the skyline and go horseback riding at the Canyon Creek Dude Ranch. Later we’ll be staying in a little Nevada casino town on the Colorado River. And then we have three days at Disneyland.

But I am most looking forward to driving out from Phoenix, the “Valley of the Sun”, to the majestic landscapes of:

Sedona

and the Grand Canyon.

I love a big landscape, whether majestic Mackenzie Country on the South Island of New Zealand, which I visited two years ago today;

or the rolling dunes of the Southern (green) Kalahari Desert in north west South Africa, which we visited 3 years ago;

or the dramatic escarpments and valleys of the western Blue Mountains, which we visited in January this year.

I love a big landscape! I love thinking about how they came into being; what ancient forces carved and shaped them; what they were like before we — humans — came; and what they will be like when we are gone. I love learning about the wildlife, the legends, and histories of the earliest inhabitants and later settlers of these landscapes.

Louisa and I will share our photos and the things we learn as we travel. Please stay tuned!