Originally, I was going to travel to San Francisco via I-80, an interstate that goes through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California before stopping in Berkeley. The trip was going to take two days, with one stop in Nevada, but that would be okay: it would be efficient.

Elizabeth said that she wanted to come out to Denver to accompany me back with her, so she spent her own money on a plane ticket, flew out to Denver on Wednesday, and left with me on Friday morning. We had Thanksgiving at my house. For the past week, Elizabeth had been nervous about something. She claimed that she had something in store for me that she hoped I would like. Then I became nervous.

Friday morning, at 12:30 AM, we set out into the vast, unknown west. We took I-70, which is a lot more scenic than I-80. It goes right through the Front Range in Colorado and there are dozens of little mountain towns/ski resorts (Vail, Breckenridge) along the way. When we stopped for gas in Silverthorne, Co., the temperature was 3 degrees! It reached only 2 degrees on our trip through the mountains, but we hoped it would get down to 0 sometime.

After Colorado came Utah. Elizabeth's idea was for us to go to Arches National Park on the way back to Berkeley, so about an hour into Utah, we got off of I-70 and traveled south to Moab. It was 7:30 AM when we got into Arches.

There are a lot of arches in Arches. Some of them are free-standing, others are in the hills. The arches there formed because of a salt lake that was in the area millions of years ago. Over time, the lake flooded and receded about 29 times, leaving different layers of sediment and salt behind. The salt in the rock expanded horizontally, forcing the rock to expand vertically. This rock then began to erode from the ground up, leaving a hollow -- the arch that everyone knows and loves today.

Arches is good if you like arches. Turns out I don't like them a lot, but I was also kind of cranky, since I hadn't slept in seven hours. But after some Wendy's, I felt better.

Elizabeth also decided that we should visit Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park, since they were both in Moab. Dead Horse Point State Park is very small and its centerpiece is a large piece of rock that juts into the Colorado River. I thought it was spectacular: the river is 2,000 feet below you and you can see for miles in any direction. There's lots of canyons, which I liked. Canyonlands National Park was even more chock-full of canyons. Again, it's 2,000 feet up, and you can see for miles. There's even canyons in the canyons. We watched the sun set there and then drove off to our next destination.

But where would that be? I had no idea.

Elizabeth drove through Utah while I slept. Sometime in the night, she told me that she was lost and that we'd have to just stop at a motel for the night. I was tired and agreeable. But let me fill you in on some facts. Prior to the trip, Elizabeth told me she had booked two hotel rooms, one with a fireplace. She also told me that she'd be doing a lot of lying on this trip so as to conceal the surprises that were in store for me. Was this a lie? I thought. Were we really lost?

Turns out not. We arrived at exactly the motel we were supposed to, a Best Western that included one room with a fireplace! It was totally awesome. Guess what was more awesome? We were a few miles from Bryce Canyon National Park! I had told Elizabeth that I visited Bryce Canyon National Park many years ago as a kid. She was heartened when I said that I liked canyons, because apparently her anxiety for a week before was due to the fact that she wasn't sure if I would like the trip she had planned. She also told me we would be visiting Zion National Park, since it was very close to Bryce Canyon. Awesome!

Bryce Canyon National Park was amazing. Each bunch of canyons has its own unique thing. Bryce Canyon's unique thing is that it was a lot of orange-and-pink rock layers, as well as tall rock towers called "hoodoos." It snowed a little the night before, which should give you an idea of how cold it was. The temperature was about 30 degrees and the wind was a-blowin'. Walking around the rim of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheatre, their largest canyon, was bone-chilling. Nevertheless, we drove around the park, looking at all the different sites to see. The views are amazing and sometimes terrifying, especially when a vista point is located on a narrow rock bridge that juts into the canyon, with only a short metal fence to keep you from careening into the canyon.

At about noon, we left Bryce (it's pretty small) and drove to Zion National Park. Zion is different from the other parks; it's primarily a driving tour. You drive down into the canyon and see the different sites. Of course, there are lots of trails to hike, but we only had until sunset that day, and besides, you could spend a week at any one of these parks if you wanted to. We only had a few days to see all of them. Zion has a lot of interesting natural rock formations, but again, its rock stuff is different from the rock stuff in any other national park. There was a really cool waterfall -- more like a water trickle -- that came from mud that filtered through the sandstone.

We left Zion at sunset and I wondered where we would go next. Elizabeth said that her plan was for us to go around the Grand Canyon at night and head to a mystery location, which I would see in the morning. How intriguing!

At about 11:00 that night, Elizabeth announced, "Oh no, I've lost us again. We're at the Grand Canyon." The saucy minx had lied again! The Grand Canyon was our mystery destination! We stayed at a hotel in Tusayan which is more the gateway to the Grand Canyon than Williams, Az., which claims to be the "Gateway to the Grand Canyon®." (And, yes, they've trademarked that phrase.) Tusayan is two miles from the south rim entrance to the Grand Canyon; Williams is about an hour away. Many a foreign tourist has booked a hotel in Williams, thinking that it was really close, but was horrified and annoyed to find that it wasn't.

The Grand Canyon is amazing. It's so big that it's more like an omnibus canyon -- a giant canyon made out of little canyons. It's about a mile deep, which makes Canyonlands, with its 2,000-foot depth, look like a ditch. It's also ten miles across and over two hundred miles long. That's a big freaking canyon. It was carved over the course of millions of years by the Colorado River. Looking a mile down into the canyon, you can see the river, and it's mind-boggling to think that something so tiny carved a canyon so monstrously huge. We took a little shuttle around the scenic points on the South Rim, the more developed side of the canyon. After a stop at Hermit's Rest, a little shop on the South Rim (that's on the South Rim -- as in, twenty feet from the rim), we headed back.

And that was Ed's Whirlwind Tour of the West. For the next several hours, we drove back to Berkeley, finally getting there at 6 AM on Nov. 28. All of Elizabeth's friends said she was crazy to attempt such a tour of five of the nation's national parks in three days. Elizabeth was terrified that I'd hate it. But you know what? We did it. And I loved it. It was a hundred thousand times better than just driving to Berkeley along I-80. And she figured, hey, we'll be in the area, why don't we visit these places? And that's the truth. Don't do things hurriedly and efficiently if you don't have to; instead, stop and look at nature along the way. It make take a few more days, but you'll be glad you did it. And I'm glad I got to see the nation's canyons on my way to my new home.