By Albert Barker

Hollywood's location managers find the most beautiful views in America for the screen, so we decided to follow their footsteps. The fly-drive holiday below took us to many of the locations through the states of Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and California. We travelled a total of 4,300 miles and the journey took 14 days, which included a number of days in Las Vegas. Some of the places we visited are not mentioned below, they include: Universal Studios, Disneyland, Queen Mary at Long Beach, and Yosemite.

Denver, the Mile High City, was the starting point for a 14-day drive west to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Colorado is breathtaking, a land of tree-clad mountains and deep ravines cut by angry rivers once panned for gold and silver. October snowstorms we encountered, the worst in 80 years, gave a virgin-white backdrop to the magnificent fall leaves. As winter hadn't officially started, there were no crowds and driving, hiking, cycling, and white-water rafting could still be enjoyed.

Just like the early settlers, we headed westward, passing through old mining towns and across the continental divide. John Wayne filmed The Searchers and True Grit around here. Scary, precipitous mountain roads lead to Silverton, the northern end of the steam-powered Durango & Silverton Railroad. We'd have loved the eight-hour trip in 19th-Century parlour cars, but time wasn't on our side. Ticket To Tomahawk was filmed here and the railroad was used for the hilarious safe-dynamiting scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as the movies Viva Zapata and Support Your Local Gunfighter. Butch and Sundance did their jump into the raging river at Durango, the other end of the railroad line. City Slickers was filmed around here as was Around The World In 80 Days. Just west of Durango, Mesa Verde's extraordinary 12th-Century Indian cliff dwellings, among the oldest structures in North America, were a worthwhile short detour, even if Hollywood has yet to call.

Monument Valley is really where you enter the cinema's Wild West. From the desert floor, remarkable, stark, and bizarre sandstone mesas stab into the sky. No wonder director John Ford loved the place. An amazing feeling of deja vu swept over us. Ford made Stagecoach here, making it a favourite location to film Westerns. Sections of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Back to the Future lll were filmed here, as well. Easy Rider's bikers rode through and Forest Gump ran through this famous desert.

Arriving at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in the early morning was smart; the colours as the sun was rising over this amazing landmark are something we will never forget. A 298-mile drive south through Kanab brought us to the South Rim and Bright Angel Lodge as the sun was setting. At sunrise and sunset the view changes rapidly, walk a few yards in either direction and there's no one around. National Lampoon's Vacation, Thelma & Louise, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Rio Grande were all filmed here. After passing through Kanab, an area littered with Western movie sets, we came across a place Hollywood has bizarrely ignored.

Bryce Canyon's extraordinary yellow and red rock formations rise hundreds of feet from the valley floor. After heading through the rugged magnificence of Zion National Park, where The Eiger Sanction, Jewel of the Nile, and Romancing the Stone were filmed. When we encountered the interstate highway, we saw more cars in a minute than we did all day in Monument Valley.

The bustle of Las Vegas was a culture shock after the wilderness. This home to umpteen films looks like a movie set everywhere you turn. Southwestern Colorado and southern Utah are staggeringly beautiful. This is nature at its grandest. Civilisation is remote and, in the clear air, the moon is bigger and the stars more plentiful than anywhere else, except in the movies and Las Vegas, of course.

Dreams can come true!!!