Utah National Parks vacation: guided geology tour

Geology highlights: Colourful arches, balanced rocks and petrified dunes at Arches National Park; the Moab Fault; incised river meanders at Goosenecks State Park; iconic spires in Monument Valley; slot canyons; the massive Comb Ridge monocline; the menacing Factory Butte and the occasional dinosaur footprint.

Culture highlights: Landscapes from the perspectives of Native Americans, early explorers, miners, outlaws and Mormons settlers; the cliff dwellings of prehistoric Native American civilization; desert towns.

Rockies geology highlights: The ridges and peaks of Cambrian strata thrust over younger beds that form the Canadian Rockies; a textbook thrust fault at Mount Kidd; a drumlin field; ash beds; Trilobite trace fossils and stromatoporoid vugs; erratic-filled glacial valleys. 

Badlands geology highlights: Colourful canyons, gullies and hoodoos; world-class examples of lateral accretion surfaces and inclined heterolithic strata in outcrop; the amazing dinosaur and Burgess shale specimens at the  Royal Tyrrell Museum; a tour of Dinosaur Provincial Park and a visit to its Hadrosaur House.

Culture highlights: Two UNESCO World Heritage sites; Calgary Tower; Banff; Icefields Parkway; Morraine Lake and Lake Louise; cooking your own meal in the famous steak pits of Patricia. 

Geology of Aragon, Spanish Pyrenees: 7-day expert-led tour

Geology highlights: The Boltaña anticline and mountain building processes; superb exposures of deep water sediments; walks along deep gorges cut into platform carbonates; extensive Nummulites  limestones. 

Culture highlights: The Camino de Santiago; Pyrenean and Spanish cuisine; an off-the-beaten-path wine region; a cheese “factory”; a mountain-top monastery; medieval villages. 

Swiss Alps summer vacation: Geneva to Chamonix & Mont Blanc

Geology highlights: Ride cable cars up to unsurpassed views of the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and other Alpine peaks while learning about their geology and the incredible tectonic forces that formed them; touch outcrops of oceanic crust; stroll on Alpine glaciers; visit a mining museum. 

Culture highlights: 4 and 5 star hotels in charming Alpine towns; scenic trips on mountain railroads; visits to museums, castles and chapels; meals in small restaurants in picturesque French, Italian and Swiss valleys; the history of mountaineering. 

Southern England and the Jurassic Coast

Geology highlights: Guided geology walk in central London; the stones of Avebury and Bath; the rounded and graded potato-to pea-size clasts of the 18-mile Chesil Beach. Fossil hunting at Lyme Regis; the iconic Durdle Door arch, Lulworth Cove and Stair Hole; the Etches Collection museum, including the spectacular recently found pliosaur skull. 

Culture highlights: Three UNESCO World Heritage sites; an 800-year-old abbey and a Gothic cathedral; famous novelists, Romans, Georgians and Victorians. 

Scotland travel tour: Highlands, Skye & Outer Hebrides

Geology highlights: Loch Ness and the Great Glen Fault; “The Cradle of Geology”: Knockan Crag and the Moine Thrust, one of the locations where thrust faults were first recognised; a deep glacial gorge; 3.2-billion-year-old Lewisian gneiss; Skye’s iconic Old Man of Storr rock pinnacles. 

Culture highlights: History, from the 5,000 year old Calanais Standing Stones to Iron Age settlements and the Highland Clearances to the Jacobite Risings and World War II. 

Ireland vacation package: Dublin, Galway Bay & Cliffs of Moher

Geology highlights: Glacially-smoothed karst limestone hills and dramatic sea cliffs of deepwater shales and cyclic deltaic deposits; the ‘biokarst’ of the Flaggy Shore; networks of subterranean caves, including the Great Stalactite at Doolin Cave; extensive carboniferous limestone pavement at Doolin Pier; the ‘Wormhole’ at Inishmore. 

Culture highlights: An Iron Age fort; scenery that’s featured in Hollywood movies; the world-famous Cliffs of Moher, inhabited by seabirds; Irish music; a stay in Ireland’s only Michelin-starred pub.