21 Days in a Lotus 7 - Kit Car Road Trip

DAY 11 - DURANGO TO VAIL
We left Durango at the same time as the steam train that goes down Main Street on its way to Silverton-and best of all, it featured a Casey Jones-type whistle (yes, that TV show was imported into the U.K. in the '60s)-very nostalgic. This was definitely our coldest morning start, and much to my wife's embarrassment I was moved to don my leather flying helmet. It soon warmed up and we began to see the fantastic colours of what we were told were Aspen trees. The roads through the mountains are so flowing, and we were all impressed by the helpful banking on the tighter bends (compared to typically much tighter Second-gear European passes), which meant it was easy to maintain a 60-70-mph average.

Our car has really impressed me here with the very steep highway inclines being easily dispatched in Sixth gear and the typical 60-80-ish increment, whilst overtaking was done in a flash. Incidentally, having the tiller on the right-hand side never proved to be too much of an obstacle. Apart from the inevitable trust placed in the navigator's call (and my wife is a cautious type), we found that we could see under many trucks and by ducking to the inside, also see what was approaching on right-hand bends.

In the course of the 400-plus miles we covered today, we ascended four passes of over 10,000 feet-the highest of which was Slumgullion Pass (another great name) at about 11,600 feet. There seemed to be more police around in Colorado, and although we avoided one strategically placed patrolman parked below the level of the road at the end of a fast canyon road, two of our number got tickets as souvenirs. (Luckily, we stuck behind slower traffic.) It was also today that another damaged sump resulted from a contact with a rock, and the wounded Caterham went into the support truck to await repairs.

DAY 12 - VAIL REST DAY
In Vail we decided to have a day off and just did a bit of downhill mountain-biking but. Some of our compatriots decided to do the 120-mile mountain loop to Aspen, and six of them seemed to incur the displeasure of the boys in blue. Details are vague, but apparently someone took offence to their speed and style of driving and our intrepid heroes ended up in the local cop shop having been escorted off the mountain by a group of police cars. The result was six tickets between five cars and a general alert was put out to five counties on our group-lucky we were headed for Utah.

DAY 13 - VAIL TO MOAB
We left early and headed down what is reputedly the most expensive piece of road in the U.S. As interstates go, this was pretty spectacular-but not as spectacular as the 23-mile rim drive around the Colorado National Monument. This is yet another superb, twisty, undulating road and required frequent stops for photos.

It was here that mild-mannered doctor Neil Williams was randomly chosen for a 15-minute tirade by a disgruntled tourist from New York. He had encountered some of our other travellers doing "up to 60 mph" (which was apparently outrageous), and wanted to know what Neil was going to do about it. He was very upset and just needed somebody in a small, brightly coloured car to take it out on.

As we crossed the state line into Utah, we encountered our first rain for more than a week, and it was therefore rather ironic to see the warning sign "danger dust storms max speed 30 mph." We headed south along the very scenic Highway 128, which follows the upper reaches of the Colorado River all the way down to Moab. We had a lot planned for today and therefore could only afford to spend an hour at Arches National Park, which is enormous. We went and saw Delicate Arch; the whole place has an otherworldly feel about it and really demanded a lot more time than we had (more than 40 miles to get to the far end).

The reason for our rush was that we had booked a 5:15 pick-up for a sunset Hummer tour on the famed Slickrock Trail in Moab. For some reason I had envisaged this would be a sort of off-road limo, so it was rather a shock to find that it was very much at the army-surplus end of the market. One of their party pieces was to stop and roll back on a 48-degree incline! The secret was not in the ordinary-looking tyres, but a combination of a very low ratio box and a diesel engine, which apparently released 490 lb-ft of torque at just past tickover-truly awesome. (The driver casually mentioned it could manage 72-degree slopes, and I decided that I was pleased I wasn't there when somebody found out 73 degrees was one degree too far.)

DAY 14 - MOAB to PAGE
We were travelling on our own as we headed toward Monument Valley (like driving through a Western film set) and pulled over for a rest and a few snaps. I had the bonnet off, checking everything was OK, when a black pickup with tinted windows and a fully loaded gun rack ghosted into the other side of the lay by and parked facing us. No one got out and we carried on pushing the car round to get a good shot (easier than getting in and out). We were only there about five minutes, but my wife was keen to leave, saying it felt like something out of the Duel or Deliverance movies. As soon as we left, the truck left too, but we floored it, so there was no way he was going to catch us even if he was interested.

Our next stop was the Navajo reservation, where we bumped into some fellow travellers who encouraged us down a track clearly not intended for cars with a 4-inch ground clearance (OK for him because he had a dry sump). Nonetheless, the shots we got with the massive buttes as a dramatic backdrop made the tortuous 1/2-mph crawl along the road really worthwhile.

DAY 15 - PAGE to LAS VEGAS
As National Parks go, Bryce Canyon is quite compact with four overlooks which allow uninterrupted views of the weirdly eroded and coloured rocks. This was a fantastic place and it is definitely on the list for any return trip. Zion National Park is completely different from Bryce in that you drive through it and look up at its ever-increasing grandeur (from east to west) rather than looking down. Photographs do some justice to Bryce but fail miserably to catch the scale of Zion.

Everybody drives faster in Nevada, including the trucks. I was particularly surprised when we were about 50 miles from Las Vegas, driving on the interstate through a mountain pass into the setting sun whilst following another Caterham. The road winds its way through these mountains and you find yourself doing 90 mph wedged between a Mack truck (the top of our windscreen was level with its axle) doing 80 on one side and a concrete barrier doing threatening on the other.

As I peered through the insect-spattered windscreen following the roll bar of the car in front (the only bit I could see), I found myself praying there were none of the tyre treads and other lorry cast-offs in our lane, because there was no way we would see them and frankly nowhere to go if we did.

Driving along the Vegas Strip after dark, in among the limos, hot rods, and goodness knows what other piles of chrome, our two mud-spattered Caterhams felt peculiarly British with people calling out from the sidewalks and hanging out car windows. As we pulled up to our hotel, the Imperial Palace, it was like a Hollywood premier, flashlights going off, people milling round the cars, "What are they?" "Where are you from?" "Where y'all going?" They were moving everyone else on, but the doorman said we were just fine to stay there while we checked in. Generally, we didn't enjoy Las Vegas, and I think on reflection that was because it was the polar opposite of a place like Bryce Canyon. Nature doesn't need neon.

DAY 16 - LAS VEGAS REST DAY
We went on a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon, which was an amazing sight, although we would like to have spent longer in the canyon itself. We were taken to a ranch and did some horseback riding (first time ever for me), and whilst that was a good laugh, it wasn't actually in the Canyon (which we were under the impression it would be). In the evening we saw a couple of the free shows the hotels put on, such as Bellagio's fountains and Treasure Island's pirate battle, but generally we were too tired to do much else. Two couples in our party took the opportunity to have drive-in weddings complete with an entourage of our cars, but generally, the whole Las Vegas experience didn't sit well with the rest of a journey emphasising the natural part of America.