Honestly, for a day I considered skipping Utah since I wanted to see California, but Mike really wanted to visit Zion and Bryce Canyon. I thought, “what does a landlocked state really have to offer?” Mike persisted and won me over. The moment we crossed the border into Utah, for the first time in my marriage, I was glad I was wrong. We traveled from Williams, AZ to Mequite, NV to Beaver Dam, AZ – why did we have to go into Nevada to get back in Arizona, you might ask? Well there’s this huge gaping hole in between the towns, we asked park rangers at Grand Canyon, when they might be filling that so as to make commuting easier through it, they couldn’t give us a definite date.
We stayed just below the border of Utah in Beaver Dam, AZ, but drove into St. George, UT for most amenities (groceries, coffee, etc.). The drive through the canyon along I-15 is beautiful, quite an introduction to the state. Beaver Dam location was ideal for getting to Zion National Park, it’s a little less than 90 minutes. Apart from the national parks, we found some cool hikes in the St. George area, including Red Cliffs, which was great but the day we hiked was surprisingly hot. These conditions are to be expected for desert environment, but we still enjoyed exploring the area and viewing interesting flora and faunae – weird lizards. But we mostly admired the views of Utah, snow-capped mountains nearly every way you looked.
After a week in Beaver Dam, we lurched our rig up I-15 toward Cedar City, UT, surprisingly the
driving in Utah was a lot less windy than what we were dealing with further south. We stayed at the Best Western Plus Cedar City, which has an RV park in the back – the only one of its kind (as far as we’ve found). We planned to stay for four nights and visit Bryce Canyon (another 90-minute trek), when we arrived, the hotel mentioned a nightly cookout for guests.
It rained the first nights we stayed there, so we figured there would be no cookout and made arrangements to see Marvel’s Infinity War. After booking the tickets, we looked out the windshield of our RV and saw the hotel’s Director of Public Relations, Aaron Montgomery lighting the firepit and grilling up bratwursts, in the pouring rain. We partook of the delicious food and still made our movie ($5 Tuesdays at the local movie theater – I kinda loved Cedar City). Rain or shine, he holds his nightly cookout for guests with hamburgers, bratwursts, pizza, chicken and SMORES! Even after touring and hiking Bryce Canyon, which was amazing and we made it home each night in time for the cookout. The best part of our stay was on the last night, Aaron set up an outdoor projector for a movie night, we watched Captain America: Civil War. This was turning into an all Marvel week!
So far, the landscape of Utah was breathtaking and we’d only seen the southern half of it! We had a brief stay in Nephi, UT where we mostly explored Nephi Mountain. What surprised us the most about Utah was the closed off roads due to snow on the road, making roads and parts of parks impassable. Coming from the mid-Atlantic area, May is usually the month where the temperature beings to climb into the 80s, so finding roads covered in 1-2 feet of snow is astonishing. And after dealing with 90-degree temps in Beaver Dam, AZ (which also resulted in our fridge not cooling), we were glad for the cooler temps.
A few days in Nephi, we moved up to Ogden, UT just north of Salt Lake City. We ventured up to Park City, on the recommendation of a few Salt Lake City photographers we met in Cedar City, but we came during the wrong season. It’s much more of a winter town, most shops were either geared towards skiing or just closed. But what do you expect when the city holds the Utah Olympic Park and various chair lifts accessible from the main street. After Park City, we parked at Salt Lake City’s state house and wandered into the city – it’s so clean and friendly, thank you Mormons! The gardens around the Mormon temple were quite beautiful and the wide perfectly level edge of the infinity reflecting pool showed masterful masonry skills. What I love about our travels west is finding so many people enjoying the outdoors whether hiking, biking, skiing, etc., when the landscape is this gorgeous you just need to be outside appreciating it.
Utah may not have an ocean border, but it’s not lacking in bodies of water. The salty smell started reminding us of the ocean, which got even stronger (with the occasional smell of dead fish) when we drove to Antelope Island just off the coast of Salt Lake City. We wanted to see Bison, and this island has a small pack of them roaming around. But like all wild things, they’re kind of on their own schedule. As we drove down the island, we were scouring the hills for the beasts, but they primarily stay away from the roads when they have an entire island to feast on. We drove as far as we could and I spotted several bison in the distance, so we started down one of the dirt paths into the hills, but got eaten alive by nasty nats, which don’t give a fig how much bug repellent you are wearing. Mike snapped a few photos with his large zoom lens, but they are still kind of hard to see. The island does boast a varied wildlife and scenic views, but clouds were rolling in so we decided to head back to the mainland.
While we only "blitzed the state" in our trip through it, we really fell in love with the sites and sounds of Utah. I had to write a whole separate blog entry for our tour of Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon in Utah - watch for that later.