Michelle Forsyth enjoys a spectacular visit to the America of canyons, cacti and cowboys.

Eternal landscapes, infinite skies. That’s what you need for a backdrop, as those makers of classic Hollywood westerns understood, if you are to create myths on a scale that both magnifies and dwarfs us. The myths of humankind’s struggle with nature, of the elemental battle between the good and the bad, of the lone, pale horse rider and the pioneer settlement perched on the edge of the world. The myths of America’s west.

My exploration of the far American West, the last frontier of the great nineteenth-century continent-wide expansion to find new lands, new riches, new lives, began with a flight from Heathrow to Phoenix, the state capital of Arizona and the fifth most populous city in the US. Arizona is itself an exemplary demonstration of the enthralling diversity of the west. The hubhub and modernity of the city, the stillness and geological antiquity of the mountains, the heat of the desert, the cool of the snow-blanketed peaks. Lying at the centre of the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix, for all its air-conditioned luxury hotels and soaring sky-scrapers, is still resonant with the spirit of those original seekers after seams of gold and horizontouching herds of cattle, and is the portal to the south-western heartlands.

From Phoenix, we travelled to Tanque Verde Ranch, located in 640 acres of the lush desert foothills that surround the Rincon Mountains. Established way back in 1868, today the ranch is home to beautifully appointed guest rooms and vistas that take the breath away. After breakfast, we leaped into the saddle to learn how to ride cowboy-style. Nature herself kindly supplied a suitable terrain: red rock buttes, rolling grasslands, riparian streams, ghostly mountain ranges, cacti so tall they seemed to spike the sky, wandering coyotes and the slither of the occasional rattlesnake.

Our next destination was Scottsdale, established in the 1880s by a US Army chaplain who bought up the land to farm citrus, peaches and sweet potatoes. First on the agenda on our arrival was a desert driving tour in a Tomcar (a huge US army vehicle), the trail lacing its way through abandoned mines and ghost towns, the air scented with the perfume of wildflowers and the desert illuminated by a light that bathed the mountains and the sand in rich, vibrant colours. Once settled back in our fabulous hotel, we were treated to a delicious meal at Mastro’s City Hall Steakhouse, the finest prime beef and seafood served under stunning art-glass chandeliers or out on the patio which was gently swathed in the fragrant, balmy breeze that carried in from the surrounding desert.

The following morning, we departed along Route 66 for Flagstaff, a town that sits high (a cool 7,000 feet high) amidst the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest. After a wild west walking tour in downtown Flagstaff, it was on to Tusayan and the Grand Hotel, designed as a mountain lodge with its exposed timber beams and flagstone fireplaces. Unpacked and settled in, it was time for a sunset trip to one of the geological wonders of the world: the Grand Canyon. Carved over aeons by the rush and energy of the Colorado River, the Canyon inhabits a special place in the popular imagination that is wholly exceeded on your encounter with this cathedral of geography. The statistics record that the Canyon stretches 277 miles from snaking end to snaking end; that its walls at some points descend a full mile from the desert rim to the boulder-strewn floor; that it required the passage of millions of years for the thunderous flow of cascading waters to gouge out this colossal ribbon of steepling cliff face. What the statistics don’t do is to prepare you for the firsthand experience of such epic grandeur, such dizzying sublimity. On the approach to the South Rim viewing point – undemonstrative meadows dotted with aspen and spruce – nothing leads you to believe you are walking on what is to become the roof of the planet. Then, suddenly, the Canyon falls away beneath you, and you find yourself re-adjusting all the normal scales of judgement of depth and height. It appears as if the earth is as far below you as the sky is above you. I didn’t think that anything could equal the thrill of gazing down into the Canyon itself, but a visit to the Imax Theatre at the National Geographic Centre, with its huge screen helicopter ride over the Canyon and the Colorado Plateau, brought just as awe-inspiring a perspective to the immensity of the area.

The sensation of being airborne was replaced, on the next day, by an actual flight. Leaving our Tusayan hotel, we caught a plane that made its way to Las Vegas, traversing the remaining length of the Grand Canyon. Could there be any greater contrast than the natural magnificence of the Canyon and the architectural edifice of Las Vegas?

There is, of course, a connection. Las Vegas has its own kind of grandeur, its own kind of monumentalism, one born of the size and ambition of the American imagination, perhaps coaxed and nurtured by the landscape. Las Vegas is artifice writ large, a gloriously sequinned, backlit, staged imitation of the rest of the world – pyramids, towers, coliseums, modern Paris and ancient Egypt glitzed and schmaltzed alike – conjured and willed from an empty strip of Nevadan desert. The city is a fantasy made glass, steel and stone. It might be cupped in the vast spaces of the West but it has banished the idea of time. Here night and day merge in an adrenalinedriven flow of endless activity. Here is a place where you can pursue that most American of dreams: reinventing yourself over and over again in the neon glow.

More recently, however, Las Vegas has seen the rise of hotels and a visitor culture that are not the addiction of gamblers or run-away lovers or wantaway dreamers. We stayed at the Wynn, with its crystal sculptures and marble floors, one of many new hotels that are not themed or casino-based. Instead of the thrill of the roulette wheel or the penny slot machine, we thrilled to the astonishing choreography of an evening performance by Cirque de Soleil. Not that the true spirit of Las Vegas was entirely abandoned: the show was a spectacular interpretation of Viva Elvis.

From Las Vegas we ventured to Reno, the former’s older but smaller brother (you go to Las Vegas to get married and to Reno to get divorced, completing a circle of love and regret). Reno, as much as its sibling, is a mecca for gamblers and delights in its ostentation, energy and zestful pursuit of life, describing itself as the ‘Biggest Little City in the World’. But it is also changing: into the jumping off point for visitors who wish to see the natural beauties – the Sierra Mountains, the empty mesas, the derelict mining claims and the lonely, tumbleweed desert tracks – of outback Nevada, a seeming universe away from the clinking chimes of the one-armed bandits and the bustle of motel lobbies. On the morning of our arrival in Reno, we were whisked to Lake Tahoe, Nevada’s glittering sapphire gemstone, its azure waters mirroring the liquid skies that greet the lake on the distant horizon, the two merging in the hazy palette of the blue of the mountains.

The next day saw us driving to Carson City, Nevada’s state capital, where we picked up the steam train – the sight of the puffing plumes emerging from it added to the romance of the trip – to Virginia City. A boom settlement that sprang up almost overnight following the discovery in 1859 of a colossal silver lode, Virginia City transformed chancers and prospectors and centless adventurers – or at least the lucky ones – into millionaires. Today, visitors are treated to saloons – the Bucket of Blood was my favourite – and (carefully managed) shoot-outs that are the memory of those claim-grab days. Back in Carson City, another treasure trove of frontier history and folklore awaited us as we strolled the Kit Carson trail, marking the rise from desert dust and the desperation of the early pioneers of a truly western American city, one that is enmeshed in its past and yet look ever forwards, buoyed by the can-do optimism of its raggle-taggle founders.

Nowhere is that progressive anticipation of a new future, or its history, better exemplified than in Carson City’s National Automobile Museum. No sooner the twentieth century breaks, and gone is the horse and buggy. In their place stands the shiny mechanisation of the internal combustion engine, the new motor of American expansion. To symbolise the vigour and vitality and steady forward gaze of the West, you only have to look at the Thomas Flyer, the car that, in 1908, won the 22,000-mile New York to Paris race. As if to reinforce the point that, for all it is steeped in the myths of the near past and in the geography of the far, far distant past, the American West is wholly of the present too, on our final full day we attended the Reno Air Race. As the competing planes roared over our heads at 500 mph, it looked and sounded a paean of praise to a technology that the old West could never have imagined yet did so much to help create by fashioning a belief that the even the sky, in this endless landscape, need not be a limit.

The next morning we caught the plane from Phoenix airport. Heading home. Heading east.

The team at Tickets Anywhere can tailor and plan an American holiday of a lifetime – or the holiday of a lifetime anywhere else – specifically to suit your wishes, making sure that it includes the sights you want to see and the places you want to visit.