This year’s Main Trip schedule --- with Las Vegas and Pomona races on back-to-back weekends --- allows little time for sightseeing. So why not add a few days to your Trip to make the most of your stay? Your Trailfinders consultant will be happy to advise you. With extra time on your hands and unlimited mileage on your rental car, where better to enjoy the freedom of the open road?

Las Vegas takes some believing. Whatever you may think of the city, you cannot deny it’s one of the more extraordinary human creations on the planet. And to counterpoint such a man-made prodigy, the surrounding region is abundant with natural wonders. Each way you turn, there’s always something more to see, and Trailfinders can offer many ways to help enhance your experience of it all.

There’s a range of scenic tours by land and by air. After dark, Las Vegas becomes an ocean of light, and a helicopter tour is the perfect way to take in this fantastic sight. By day, there are jeep tours to carry you off-road up desert trails and air tours to give you a bird’s-eye view of the whole, breathtaking scene. Descend by helicopter into the Grand Canyon itself, an experience that will live in your memory forever.

If the Grand Canyon defies mere words, it’s far from being the only wonder that Utah and Arizona possess. How about Monument Valley, or the monumental Hoover Dam? Magnificent Bryce and Zion Canyons and the Cedar Breaks National Monument? Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef National Parks? Canyon de Chelly?

California boasts its own array of marvels. Death Valley and Yosemite Valley --- utterly different places, yet both inspire awe in equal measure. Yosemite’s giant sequoia trees, and those of King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, are the largest living things on earth, while beautiful Napa and Sonoma loom large in the world of wine. Towering redwood groves overlook the Pacific Coast Highway --- one of the world’s great coastal drives linking sophisticated, vertiginous San Francisco to the endless cityscape of Los Angeles, home to the original Disneyland and Universal Studios, Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

Have rental car, will travel. Western USA’s broad roads offer comfortable, easy driving through the most spectacular scenery (and real rollercoaster thrills in San Francisco!). While Americans complain loudly about the price of petrol, by European standards it’s still agreeably low.