Dr Greg Spellman
The annual Second Year Geography field trip to the USA ran in the first two weeks of April. 32 students and 3 tutors flew into a hot Las Vegas airport only immediately to drive a mile high onto the Colorado plateau where the snow not only capped the mountains but still lay amongst the pine trees at our first hotel. This popular field trip is based on a 1000-mile loop around the high desert states of Arizona, Utah and Nevada. The route takes us across the Hoover Dam, along Route 66 and to a number of friendly, but small, American towns. We take in five National Parks (Grand Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion), a National Monument (Sunset Crater Volcano) and a Navajo Tribal Park (Monument Valley). In the course of the trip we study three interconnected themes of landscape development, tourism and resource management.
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| Arches National Park |
Visits to National Parks usually involve walking some form of trail which can range from ‘pleasant stroll’ to ‘strenuous’ (coming back up the trail at Grand Canyon, for instance, can be breathtaking in more ways than one). Each park is very different but the most popular this year was probably the immense sandstone structures at Arches National Park. The trip ends up with four nights in sunny Las Vegas where there is no shortage of all forms of Geography! This is the eleventh year we have run this hugely successful and enjoyable trip and students and staff alike never fail to be impressed by the ‘truly awesome’ environments.
