Frasier Crane went from Boston to Seattle.

The Reverse Frasier was my 12,500 mile road trip across America in 2009. I drove from Seattle to Boston.

While travelling, I kept a journal.

An extract from it was a runner-up in The Guardian’s 2009 travel writing competition [big boast]. It was published here or you can read it below.

Lost in the desert, Arizona and Utah

It’s all pretty prehistoric in Arizona. Dinosaurs walked through here once – left their tracks in the red sandstone plateau. Their claw marks, still visible, still look fresh. This is concrete, right?

Henry, a Navajo, shows us round the site, facts cribbed from a child’s dinosaur book. Hand-drawn scrawls pinned by the fossils help us visualise what these fierce beasties looked like. They used to let scientists take the bones for science. No more. The footprints belong to the Navajo.

A mountain river runs dark, crisp, and cold. Gold miners panned the waters here, below Mount Baldy, but now their shacks are piles of planks, the stoves in rusted pieces, manufacturer seals still emblazoned.

We turn up a side road in Marysvale, Utah, heading up into those low hills, forested and bulbous. The road turns from tarmac to potholed tarmac to grit to potholed grit. These woods are eerie. Hollywood taught us this. Best stay at home. Best watch a video.

What’s THAT? A crash through the trees. Over there. See the branches still moving? I saw a flash of dappled hide. I sense fangs and claws. There is nothing around. Just silence, and a twist of a road climbing onwards and upwards – nowhere to retreat from fear. This is the emptiness of America.