National Parks and Canyons

Little Bighorn Special - Archers Direct, May 2010

Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

This is my first published bus tour, although it's not the first I've taken. This one was with my usual bus tour tour operator, Archers Direct, the cheaper, online/telephone-booking version of Cosmos Tours.

On this tour we plan to cover eight states (Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona and Nevada - oh, and ninth state New Jersey, if you count the airport layover) over a period of eighteen days.

Map Copyright © Archers Direct


DAY 1: Thursday 6 May 2010 - Denver, Colorado

This trip I was travelling with my usual assistants, Di and Paul, and Di's brother Dave was tagging along. He doesn't yet see himself as one of my assistants, but he'll learn! We flew from Birmingham on our favourite airline, Continental. We generally get decent legroom, a good choice of movies on the Atlantic leg (for now), on-board meals, friendly staff and access to the USA from an airport less than 20 miles from home, changing in Newark, New Jersey before heading on to Denver, Colorado.

Arrival in Denver was easy. We met up with a tour representative and almost immediately headed for a bus to the hotel - simples - last year we lost a few travellers! First surprise when the driver looked very familiar – he was the same driver as last year! Another Paul. Of course, he remembered me (Di and Paul not so much!)

The first night was in the Comfort Inn Downtown Denver. This is well-located, being only one block from the 16th Street Mall which has stores, restaurants, fast food outlets and even better, a free shuttle that runs from one end to the other, stopping on each block for you to hop on and off (well, you don't have to hop!)

The rooms are fairly standard, but since last year they'd installed wifi in guest rooms, which was good for me, earning them that fourth Ted.

As we'd been here last year, we knew to get dinner down on 16th. We'd spotted there was a Cheesecake Factory, but on our way there we passed a Chilis and opted to go there instead - we'd eaten quite a bit on the way (to us it was now about 2am Friday morning, UK time) so we thought this would be lighter. The Cheesecake Factory could wait till tomorrow.

We had to wait a few minutes for a table, but once we were seated, we got great burgers - even veggie Di! They'll substitute a bean burger (at some locations only) on any of their burger options, and Paul was able to get a bottle of red wine, so everyone was happy.


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