From Sin City to the foot of Zion, the sites seen and reader recommendations of day one, mapped:

Though the Cliffrose Lodge is apparently without vacancy, this stunning view ought to support @alishepster's tip to try for it if you can:

Before crashing, though, Croll recommends the Bit and Spur Restaurant & Saloon in Springdale for winding down after a day of hiking Zion.

Tomorrow the team will take to Zion National Park – or they ought to in some capacity, seeing as it's been recommended by just about every Guardian reader and contributor who has something to say about Utah.

The state's first national park is 229 square miles of canyons, forests, plateaus, waterfalls, rock arches and the Virgin River. Of special notice are the Emerald Pools and Angel's Landing, the latter of which watermemory has dubbed unforgettable ("if you're reasonably fit and have a head for heights"). For a less "fear-inducing" experience, you can also take to the Narrows or you can "canyoneer" the Subway. (Hukgogan provides a welcome note that "It only gets scary the last 200 meters which you can skip if you want.")

Hikes vary from the half-hour variety to a full eight hours or longer, and you can stay overnight at the Zion Lodge to maximise your time in the park and keep looking for traces of the varied wildlife or the remnants of the Anasazi people who once lived here.

And if you'd rather stay at home, the National Park Service has an Angel's Landing 'eHike' – and some stunning photos courtesy the NPS:

KSmythe can consider us warned:

On a long, tiresome drive through the strangest state in the whole of the USA, my parents and I found ourselves at a truck stop somewhere in the dust bowl of Utah.

My father had for the first time in a long time, needed a cuppa. Having never been to Utah before, we wandered into the truck stop and were met by a burly man with a huge moustache who asked us what we wanted. Three coffees.

With a look of total apprehension, turned to my father and replied, 'You're in Utah now, boy. There's a Starbucks about a hundred kilometres that way.'

Turned away, and refused to serve us again. When you find yourself in Utah, remember this. There is nothing more hostile than facing a Mormon deprived of caffeine in the most desolate place in the USA.

Of course, don't go to Starbucks either. That's probably worse.

We've been getting tons of tips for the town of St George, Utah, which is close to our team's destination today of Springdale, which bills itself the 'Gateway to Zion National Park'.

The gorge near the town has come highly praised as well, though oddly enough we've yet to see any 'St Gorge' cracks …

Jae426 and davecamden recommend the area near St George for its ghost towns, which they say aren't tourist attractions but can show "a side of America your average traveller never sees".

Thestens1 tells us that there's a huge thrift shop in St George run by Deseret Industries, and that it's "excellent for overalls (denim dungarees) and tee shirts with quirky advertising logos, etc!"

In-N-Out Burger comes highly recommended over at Witness, though the team will likely seek a more uncommon dining experience – even if it means passing up "American fast food dining at its best". 

To that end, ITLaw23 tells us below the line that the Cafe Rio Grill is well worth the wait, and DeborahCoonts recommends the Painted Pony, along with the Virgin River Gorge (video above).

Finally, we have JJForest's emphatic advice, which needs no explication:

I recommend St. George Utah in general, its a beautiful town. In particular, a St. George massage is the best massage I ever had.

A desert/Mormon/Utah playlist, per Marcel's request:

Send us more – we still need songs for the mountains!

And we're in Utah!

There are thunderous grey skies to the north. Andy claims he saw a flash of forked lightning. Drama queen.

This is the best part of the day to be outside as the light changes, but the clouds might just kill off the sunset. The clouds look pretty bad.

A lot of people have said St George is a great town. I'm tempted to stay here tonight. We had a very early start and not much sleep last night …

There's a lot of driving ahead of us.

Those jagged peaks to our left are the Mormon Mountains, according to my map. What are they doing in Nevada?

To our right are the Virgin Mountains.

What I took for cacti are in fact Joshua trees! Amazing to see them growing in the desert...

As sunset approaches, the light is getting more and more and lovely. The colours of the rock are turning pink and yellow. We're getting closer to the time photographer's call "golden hour".

There's a long stretch of grass here beside the Virgin River – a strip of oasis.

And now we're entering Mesquite, right on the border with Arizona.

Back on the other side of Nevada on the edge of Death Valley, we've been told at Witness of the ghost town of Rhyolite, the remains of which include a three-story bank, part of the jail, the train depot and the 'Bottle House'. 

According to the NPS, Rhyolite's glory days of quartz mining lasted only three years, when such characters as Shorty Harris, EL Cross, and Old Man Beatty roamed the hills. In the nearly incoherent language of 19th century mineral prospectors, Shorty described the bonanza of quartz as "just full of free gold … it was the original bullfrog rock … this banner is a crackerjack."

We're just entered the Moapa Indian Reservation and pulled over to get some water at the petrol station.The place sells an interesting range of products: dreamcatchers, booze, cigars and crates and crates of fireworks.

There's already something epic about the landscape. The names alone – Muddy Mountains Wilderness, Bitter Spring Valley, Valley of Fire State Park – have a fierce ring to them.

Back on the highway now and the jagged mountains of the Las Vegas Range and the Arrow Canyon Range are rising up ahead of us from the scrubby desert.

The route bears east from here, dipping briefly into Arizona, before it heads north into Utah.

Andy's iPod is finally cooperating with the car stereo. Send us a desert/Mormon/Arizona playlist!

Now this is road trip proper. Two lanes of black top. Desert stretching away on either side. Blue skies. Huge articulated trucks alongside us. Woohoo!

We're on our way to Springdale, Utah, on the edge of Zion National Park – any tips on where to stay? Comment below or tweet @Therouvian or #twitrips!

One note of caution … while we were eating our seafood, the TV broadcast a warning of flash floods in this area in the next couple of hours.

We're heading out onto I-15 and the sky is clear, but we'll keep off any dried up riverbeds for the next hour or so.

We want to avoid the Interstates as much as possible as we make our way to Denver. The next stretch is unavoidable – we're going to cover about 120 miles to take us into Utah.

A lot of people have said Route 12 is a great scenic drive, so that's where we're headed. (Editor's note: Indeed, even the Harley owners of Las Vegas hail Route 12 as one of the best places to ride.)

Wherever we are we'll pull over for the sunset.

Our hot 'n juicy crawfish came in a plastic bag with potatoes and corn. We also ordered shrimp and crab legs.

We gowned up like surgeons to protect ourselves from the splatter and got to work.

This isn't elegant eating. You're wrestling with the crustacea and likely to spray your neighbour with bits of shell and sauce. So probably best not to take your in-laws unless you're a Tudor monarch. But it's really delicious: the seafood is bathed in garlic and fresh chilli. It's very spicy and moreish.

Each of us ended up sitting behind a huge rampart of discarded shells.

Now we're heading back to I-15, questioning the wisdom of eating so much garlic when we're going to spend the next three hours in a very confined space …

Our obligatory Las Vegas playlist, compiled by Andy – can you spot the common denominator? (Sinatra is synonymous with Las Vegas)

Send us your recommendations for songs and we'll put together more playlists for the road to Utah!

Below the line, ITLaw23 has given us a slew of great tips, from the Pinball Museum and Hall of Fame, described pithily:

It's about the only place in Vegas not based on gambling, and they have hundreds of machines for $0.25 a go. A bit of a weird place, but utterly amazing, and very central.

ITLaw23 also suggests the fried chicken eggs benedict at Hash House a Go Go, followed by jaunts through Zion National Park and Snow Canyon to hike off that enormous lunch. The team will undoubtedly see a lot of natural beauty as they trek east, and hopefully will get to one of these national parks.

Thanks to the contributors at Guardian Witness, who continue to send great tips for what to see and do in Vegas – even though Marcel, Jake and Andy will be hitting I-15 this afternoon towards Utah. Among their recommendations are the 'Fremont St Experience':

Absolute must-see: light-show and music projected on to 500+ft mall roof! Stay in Golden Nugget & it's right next-door. Swim-thru' shark pool in hotel not bad either...

And a tip for going off the beaten path into the beaten plain: Death Valley.

Here you can visit Zabriski Point. You’ll heave the road to yourself and the tumbleweed – sing along to Joni Mitchell’s Coyote. En Route, stop off at Nevada Joe’s – again if it’s still there. It’s right next to a Shell Station and there’s a café selling fantastic cinnamon rolls and all stuff alien related as this is on the edge of Area 51. Oh – it’s also a brothel.

Well, that was interesting! An internet entrepreneur is spending a fortune turning the city synonymous with vice into a cuddly version of Brighton or San Francisco.

At least, that's what I took from the tour.

Now, we're heading for lunch at the restaurant Hot N Juicy Crawfish, kindly recommended by Hannah Sierp.

We just got our first taste of I-15, the interstate which will take us into Utah shortly.

This may be the original Vice City, but the real vice – the legal brothels – takes place outside Vegas.

We'll let you know shortly about the crawfish, after which we've got a couple of hours of solid driving after lunch and then we'll be into Utah, and thinking about where on earth we should stay …

The tour actually goes through Tony's apartment. I've just seen his Jungle Room. It's very Willy Wonka, though the foliage is inedible.

This is fun – it's not every day you get to mooch around the flat of an internet mogul … 

Vegas is known for its bizarre crossovers, yet Mark Healey has suggested one of the more peculiar combinations: mini-golf and metal-glam rock. The Kiss mini-golf course – complete with an animatronic Gene Simmons, lasers, and glowing murals – is one of 30 some themed courses at Monster Mini Golf, near the Hard Rock Hotel. From the site's photos, it looks colourful, vaguely intimidating and vaguely clownish, dark yet well-lit, oddly retro, and a perfectly ill-suited place to get married – it looks like Vegas.

Vegas will bet on anything; now that the Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a boy, the oddsmakers can finally get back to what they do best – calculate the odds.

William Hill has the top few as follows:

George: 2/1

James: 4/1

Alexander: 6/1

Albert: 12/1

Phillip: 14/1

Arthur, Henry, Louis: 16/1

Benjamin, Richard: 20/1

And if those strike numbers strike you as spurious, see OddsChecker, which lists … everything. If you'd rather just follow along, our heroic livebloggers have continued to cover events here.

The first disappointment is that it's NOT Ms Danger running the tour. It's her colleague Heidy.

I'm distracted by Heidy's colourful hair!

From what she's saying, it seems Tony Hsieh has huge plans for this place. He's invested $350m of his own money in his vision to transform the city's downtown. He sounds like a combination of Donald Trump and Willy Wonka.

Heidy compares him to the Wizard of Oz.

How odd to have a utopian scheme for Sin City! But maybe this is the future … 

While the team adventures with Krissee Danger, we'd like to say thanks to Hannah Sierp for her double recommendation of the Neon Boneyard and Hot N Juicy Crawfish. Crawfish – or all manner of shellfish, seasoning and spice combo – could still be on the menu, but sadly, time constraints are keeping the team from the Boneyard. 

Part of the Neon Museum, the collection of (in)famous retro signs rests across two-acres and includes over 150 signs in all. There's the frightening duckling below, the iconic signs of the Moulin Rouge Hotel and Caesar's Palace, and a giant skull from Treasure Island, among many, many others. You can take a look at Boneyard's Flickr, or the museum's Wiki:

I'd love to linger in the Mob Museum. It's all fascinating background to the story of this city. But we're really pushed for time and I want to go on a Downtown Tour. I was persuaded on the strength of the tour guide's name and stated occupation. Very much looking forward to meeting you, Krissee Danger, Urban Adventurer.

The Las Vegas Mob Museum is an offer we couldn't refuse.
It's great if a little macabre. I'm looking at the actual wall against which Bugs Moran's men were gunned down on St Valentine's Day 1929. It was dismantled brick by brick in Chicago and reassembled here, complete with bullet holes.

This clothes shop is part of the intended future of the downtown.

Tony Hsieh, the internet entrepreneur behind shoe specialist Zappos.com, is moving his HQ here.

The plan is that an influx of bright young things will regenerate the area, creating a more intimate, connected neighbourhood.

Hannibal Nisperos and Nicole Daniel run a hip clothing store in a former cheque-cashing store on Fremont. The tellers windows still line the back of the shop. I'm tempted by the straw trilbys for $50 a pop.

Nicole was born and raised in the city.

"The city's changing for the better. It's being restored to the living community that was down here. My dad used to drive along here when he was in High School."

For the less restrained, there's this food option just along Fremont: the Heart Attack Grill. Jacob says there have been one or two actual heart attacks at the restaurant. According to the Las Vegas Sun, 52-year-old John Alleman, an unofficial mascot of the diner, died of a heart attack in February. There's more about the controversy that the restaurant sparks in this USA Today article.

If you're over 350lb, you eat for free.

They offer the world's most calorific burger too. You can wash it down with one of their butterfat milkshakes.

Broadacres Fleamarket - closed Mondays. Doh!

Neon Boneyard - needs more notice for a visit. Double doh!

Start playing nice Vegas!

Marcel is weighing up his next move, but the new Mob Museum, in the Downtown area, tipped by @mollyodonnell,sounds mildly interesting given the town's history. Lots of Mob mugs whose names end in "y" most probably - Bugsy, Lucky, Lansky and the likey:

Located in the heart of downtown Las Vegas, The Mob Museum showcases both sides of the notorious battle between organized crime and law enforcement. With high-tech theater presentations, iconic one-of-a-kind artifacts, and interactive exhibits, you can finally discover the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

That was the first solid food we've had since arriving. How remarkably better I feel.

A Taoist sage said the secret of life was "when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep".

I always feel that much human anguish arises from people's failure to observe the iron law that 1pm is lunchtime.

Speaking of which, where are we having lunch? The clock is ticking down towards it... 2 hours and 10 minutes to go.

Kevin Washington cautioned from us venturing much further along Fremont. Someone robbed him of his hat and his watch last year. He said there was a fair bit of gang and drug related crime.

Now contemplating our next move...

He gets everywhere, doesn't he. Good spot Andy Maclure!

We've ended up at a hipsterish record shop/coffee shop on East Fremont Street called The Beat. It's been here for three years. It's in the middle of the Downtown Project, which is an idea funded by a internet entrepreneur to revive the city centre.

En route, we ran into Kevin Washington, AKA Aquarius. Kevin was dressed so nattily that he could have passed as a member of the Rat Pack. His stylish look occasionally gets him into trouble - he said people mistake him for a pimp or a dealer. In fact he's living on the street at the moment. His stetson came from a Thrift Store.

He's a great singer and gave us a couple of impressive soul standards as we stood there. He's waiting to hear back about a couple of possible singing jobs...

Simon Cowelll, are you listening? This bloke's got talent and a backstory...

Vegas seems to split the jury, with some commentors, such as dontshootme, advising Marcel and the team to get on the first bus out of there, because "it's RUBBISH!". Others, such as chuckmonster and sezame, embrace the kitsch: "The best thing about Vegas is it's so fake that it's real!"

What's your take? Love it? Hate it? Stick or bust? Let us know in the comments below.

We're indebted to @HunterAcosta1 for suggesting this 70s classic, serving "hearty dishes and oversized portions".

Judging by the pictures we've found on Google, it's an oversized feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.

Get in Marcel - you know you want to...

Like the Strip itself, the Peppermill Restaurant and
Fireside Lounge have been the backdrop for classic films
 and TV shows like “Casino,” “Showgirls,” “The Cotton
Club,”“The Holly Madison Show,” “MTV Spain” and
“Giada at Home” and boasts their share of famous visitors –
including such timeless stars as Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis,
to Guy Fieri, Criss Angel and Floyd Mayweather.

Tip comes in from Guardian sportswriting great Richard Williams, veteran of many a Vegas prizefight:

And this is what it looks like...

Heading across town to Fremont Street.

This is the Vegas of wedding chapels and little casinos. It's a shabbier corner of the city, another kind of Americana.

It's also the last throw of the dice for a gambler on a losing streak.

While we wait for Marcel and the crew to track down the perfect Vegan breakfast in the perfect spot, here's a bit of backstory on Sin City from the redoubtable American journalist, novelist, biographer Nick Tosches circa 1995:

Like Hollywood, Vegas had been nothing. It was a forgotten Pueblo wasteland that the noble white man had not even passed through until 1829...Gambling, outlawed in Nevada in 1915, was legalized again in 1931, when state legislation also eased divorce laws to increase state revenues. This made Nevada the only lawful game in America. But Vegas remained little more than a forsaken railroad-depot town. The gambling rooms, most of them located in downtown in a two-block area around Fremont and Second streets, drew much of their profits from the paychecks of the workmen building the Boulder Dam... [but it was] Bugsy Seigel who made Las Vegas a temple town of the American Dream.

That was back in the 40s of course, when Bugsy built the Flamingo -

“the greatest gambling casino in the world”.

A lot of things have changed since then of course, as Mark Cooper, writing in The Village Voice once said:

The traditional sleaze and cheese that had always made this place a great weekend refuge from the monotony of an ordered and decorous life are being swept away by a lava flow of respectability and Family Values.

We wait to see if the breakfasts have been granola'd and muesil'd.

Just spoken to Jacob... He'll be with us in 10 minutes.

Jacob's top breakfast suggestion is in our hotel: "The cool place under the Eiffel Tower."

Is there somewhere more authentically Vegas? Is that a contradiction in terms?

While Marcel is waiting for photographer Jacob Kepler to push through the gridlock (or embouteillage - in the local parlance), we thought we'd share his gallery of Sin City. He's a local, don't you know

Okay, "Paris" is now doing my head in. 

I'm wandering down fake cobbled streets past pseudo-bistros and fraudulent fromageries searching for the one place my breakfast voucher is valid... and it turns out to be in a different hotel.