Four Week Itinerary, California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, 2003

2003 – Digital map of a recommended four week itinerary through California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com

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The story behind the image

It’s time for a bonus post for you – a digital map I created showing the itinerary of our trip through California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada back in September 2003.

This was our honeymoon trip, and – after Western Canada in the year before – it was another dream vacation coming true. 26 days in the south west of the United States with countless (really!) stunning sights and experiences, for example: San Francisco, Highway Number 1, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Route 66, the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley, and – of course – Yosemite.

Four weeks full of new impressions, interesting people and stunning places. I captured 44 rolls of film – in total 1,623 images. This was a large amount back in 2003. (These days I easily return with 2,000 images from a full-day wedding assignment.)

At the time of writing, I have so far selected 168 images for you and tagged them as California (76), Arizona (36), Nevada (12), and Utah (44). I sincerly hope you like them as much as we do.

For your convenience, here is our exact itinerary. The ‘days’ refer to the place where we spent the night(s).

Days 1 – 3	San Francisco
Day 4	Pacific Grove
Day 5	San Simeon
Day 6	Santa Barbara
Day 7	Los Angeles
Days 8 and 9	Palm Springs
Day 10	Kingman
Days 11 and 12	Grand Canyon
Day 13	Page
Day 14	Mexican Hat
Days 15 and 16	Moab
Day 17	Torrey
Day 18	Bryce
Day 19	Springdale
Days 20 and 21	Las Vegas
Day 22	Lone Pine
Day 23	Lee Vining
Day 24	Petaluma
Day 25	Redwood City

We had just booked the nights in San Francisco so we could settle in without stress. We picked all other nights enroute, making this trip a genuine road trip. This worked pretty well for us. As you can see, we put less focus on Los Angeles as we were eager to visit the iconic National Parks of the South West.

In total, we drove 3,854 miles (6,202 kilometers) during our stay.

Maybe this helps with your trip planning.