Explore Bryce Canyon’s rim viewpoints and short trails for views into natural amphitheatres crowded with hoodoos. Choose walks that suit the day and pause to see how light changes the colours and shadows across the spires.

Carved into the edge of the high Paunsaugunt Plateau, Bryce’s formations are best understood from above as well as on foot. The elevated setting reveals the breadth of the amphitheatres and the intricate shapes within them.

Meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over dinner at a local Scottsdale restaurant. Share a meal with your small group and get to know the people accompanying you through the Southwest.

Scottsdale sits at the edge of the Sonoran Desert, beneath the McDowell Mountains. The welcome dinner offers a relaxed introduction to the region and a chance to exchange stories before the group sets out into canyon country.

• 3 Dinner (D)
• 6 Breakfast (B)
• 1 Lunch (L)

• Grand Canyon National Park: Meet Local Expert “Canyon Tim” at the South Rim, taking in viewpoints reserved for smaller numbers and away from the busiest lookouts. Tim helps you read the canyon through its rock layers and living landscape, sharing what to look for along the rim as the scale of the place opens up in front of you.
• Monument Valley: Join Baya at Shash Diné EcoRetreat in her family’s traditional hogan for Navajo tea. Hear the history of the Diné (Navajo) people and learn about cultural practices that continue today, shared in the traditional setting of a family hogan.

Insight Vacations

• Experience enhanced hygiene protocols to align with the latest guidance following COVID-19. All Travel Directors and Drivers have completed training in enhanced well-being and hygiene protocols.
• Hand sanitizer is freely available on board for you to use throughout the day.
• We only work with establishments we are confident will consistently adhere to our high well-being standards, which include hotels, restaurants and sight-seeing venues.

• Business class coach with extended leg room
• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• Premium regional accommodation

Travel the Red Rock Scenic Byway into Sedona, where rust-coloured sandstone formations rise above a town known for its galleries and independent shops. Take in views of the sculpted rock skyline before following the winding road through Oak Creek Canyon.

The canyon route climbs through Coconino National Forest, revealing a different side of northern Arizona as red stone gives way to wooded slopes. Together, the two drives capture the changing landscapes that make this stretch of the Southwest distinctive.

Explore the Grand Canyon’s South Rim with Local Expert Canyon Tim, taking in viewpoints away from the busiest lookouts. Learn to read the vast exposed rock layers and look for the plants and wildlife that inhabit the canyon’s edge.

Tim connects the landscape’s geological scale with its human story, giving meaning to the bands of colour and far-reaching views. There is also time to experience the rim and its viewpoints at your own pace.

Visit Cameron Trading Post on Navajo Nation land and browse its textiles, jewellery and other goods. This working trading post offers a closer look at a longstanding point of exchange in northern Arizona.

Trading posts have played a role in commerce across the region for generations. Here, the setting provides context for the crafts on display and for the communities whose traditions remain part of the landscape beyond the Grand Canyon.

Join Baya in her family’s traditional hogan at Shash Diné EcoRetreat for Navajo tea and a conversation about Diné life. Hear about the history of the Navajo people and cultural practices that continue today.

The family setting makes this an opportunity to listen to a host speaking about her own community. Sharing tea inside a hogan adds a personal dimension to the journey across Navajo Nation land.

Explore Monument Valley on a guided tour among its immense sandstone buttes and open desert spaces. See the formations from within the landscape, where the distance between mesas conveys their scale more vividly than a roadside view.

Monument Valley lies on Navajo Nation land and is closely associated with both Diné heritage and the imagery of the American West. A guided visit brings focus to the valley’s distinctive shapes, colours and setting.

Travel by off-road vehicle to a Monument Valley cookout hosted by members of the Navajo Nation. Enjoy a barbecue dinner featuring Navajo tacos and fry bread, and spend the evening with your hosts as they share traditional songs and dances.

This is more than a meal: it is a hosted cultural gathering in the valley’s desert setting. The experience supports local hosts and is identified by the operator as contributing to reduced inequalities.

Discover Mystery Valley with a local Diné guide, choosing this included activity in place of the Monument Valley sunrise tour. Explore a quieter backcountry area of sandstone formations, Ancestral Puebloan ruins and rock-art panels.

Look for petroglyphs and traces of earlier daily life, including pottery shards in the desert landscape. Your guide offers local perspective on a place whose archaeological remains reward attentive exploration.

See Monument Valley at first light, choosing this included activity in place of the Mystery Valley guided visit. Begin near the Mitten Buttes and follow the 17-mile loop road, stopping at viewpoints across the mesas and sandstone spires.

As the sun rises, shifting light defines the contours of the valley’s landmark formations. The early start offers a different way to appreciate the colour, shadow and space of this Navajo Nation landscape.

Look out over the San Juan River at Goosenecks State Park from a rim-top viewpoint. Far below, the river winds through a succession of tight bends cut deep into the rock, while desert views stretch beyond the canyon.

The overlook makes the river’s long work visible in a single panorama. It is a striking place to consider how moving water has carved and reshaped the seemingly solid landscapes of the Southwest.

Pause at the famous U.S. 163 viewpoint where a straight ribbon of highway points towards Monument Valley’s distant buttes. Recognise the backdrop associated with the film Forrest Gump and take in one of the Southwest’s most familiar road-trip views.

The appeal lies in the composition: open desert, an apparently endless road and sandstone monuments on the horizon. It is a brief but distinctive photography stop rooted in the valley’s place in popular culture.

Walk to the Horseshoe Bend overlook near Page and look down to the Colorado River as it curves around a sandstone fin. From the rim, the water’s broad, near-270-degree turn comes into view roughly 305 metres below.

Set within Glen Canyon, the viewpoint reveals the scale of a river-carved landscape in a single sweeping scene. Take time at the overlook to absorb the contrast between the dark water, layered rock and open desert.

Explore Zion Canyon, where the Virgin River runs beneath towering Navajo Sandstone cliffs. Take in the canyon-floor scenery, with cottonwoods and hanging gardens bringing pockets of green to the pale rock walls.

Look out for formations such as the Court of the Patriarchs and the Great White Throne. Zion’s close-set cliffs offer a different perspective from the Southwest’s wide-open overlooks: here, the height and texture of the stone surround you.

Join your small group for a farewell dinner in Springdale and raise a glass to the landscapes explored together. A shared meal offers time to exchange favourite moments with fellow travellers and your Travel Director.

Springdale sits beside Zion National Park, giving the gathering a canyon-country setting. Unlike a routine evening meal, this hosted dinner marks the close of the group’s journey through the American Southwest.

See the Grand Canyon from the air on an optional flightseeing trip by helicopter or fixed-wing plane. The aerial perspective reveals the canyon’s immense scale and branching landforms in a way that differs from its South Rim viewpoints.

Exposed rock layers and the vast reach of the landscape become easier to trace from above. This Optional Experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; the choice of aircraft and flight details should be confirmed locally.

Visit Upper Antelope Canyon with a Navajo-owned and run guiding team on Navajo land. Enter the narrow sandstone passage to see its flowing, wave-like walls and the changing light that brings out their warm colours.

This slot canyon is both a distinctive geological setting and a place visited under local guidance. The operator identifies the visit as a MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour.