Utah Trip

After the Grand Canyon trip last year we wanted to go to more national parks around the US.  Some friends of ours, Jessie and Dan, were planning a trip for the summer and I asked if we could tag along.  We chose Zion National Park because it was cheap to get to honestly.  Southwest flies direct to Vegas from BWI and then we could rent a car and drive to Utah.  I had really wanted to go to Glacier or Yosemite but after seeing that it would be at least $500 to fly to those parks we ruled them out.  It really surprises me that it can be cheaper to get to Europe or Central America than many places in the US.

So, that's how we decided on Utah!  I honestly didn't do too much planning leading up to the trip.  I read some blogs about popular hikes and made sure I still had all my hiking gear before we left but that's about it.

Arrival and Drive North

Our flight from BWI didn't leave until 3pm so we sat around most of the morning.  In hindsight we should have taken an earlier flight since we lost that day to travel and arrived very late.  After getting the rental car, eating dinner and losing an hour (Nevada is in a different time zone than Utah which it took us longer than it should have to figure out!) we didn't get to our AirBnB until 1 in the morning.  We did see some beautiful elk grazing near our AirBnB as we arrived though.

Jessie had booked the rental car and went with Firely.  At first they tried to give us a super tiny car that smelled terrible and I'm not even sure our suitcases would have fit.  Eventually we ended up with a Chevrolet Impala (I think?) that was pretty annoying to drive.  Luckily, Dan thought to bring an aux cable so we could plug in our phones to listen to podcasts and music on the long drives.  I definitely need to add that to my travel tool kit for future car rentals.

On the way out of town we googled places that might work for dinner.  At first we ended up at a gas station taco place that had great reviews but looked decidedly not vegetarian friendly (half of our group are vegetarians but we know lengua means tongue tacos) and then found a pizza place called Old School Pizzeria.  It was delicious and I definitely would recommend it.  In fact, it was so good we stopped a second time on our way back to the airport (bonus is that it's right next to a vape store).  I got a small vegetarian pizza which lasted 3 meals.

The drive from the Vegas airport was 3.5 hours.  It was beautiful on the way back to the airport in the daylight but at night it's pretty desolate and there isn't too much to see.

Our AirBnB

Initially we had looked into staying near Zion in a cabin as part of a resort whose name escapes me right now.  Even split between two couples it would have been quite expensive.  I thought paying that much for one bathroom for 4 people seemed a little silly so we decided on an AirBnB.   Our AirBnB was a condo with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.  What we didn't realize though was that one of the two bathrooms was a full bathroom off the living room and not connected to a bedroom.  That seemed like a pretty odd design choice to me.  We couldn't decide who would get the master bedroom and bathroom so we went with the tried and true best 2 out of 3 rock, paper scissors.  Brandon and I lost and wound up with the bathroom off of the living room.

We arrived so late on Wednesday (or, technically Thursday morning) that we didn't even realize until after breakfast in Thursday that the hot water didn't work.  We went out to breakfast at a small local diner (it was delicious!), went grocery shopping and then came home to go on a short hike behind the condo complex.  While we were out hiking the property manager came to fix the hot water heater.

Kanab

Our AirBnB was in a tiny Utah town called Kanab.  It's in southern Utah only a few miles from the Arizona border.  There are no chain stores in Kanab- even the grocery stores seem to be small family-owned stores.  You will also have a hard time buying alcohol in Kanab and (I suspect) in Utah in general.  In most restaurants and grocery stores you won't find beer above 4% (most are 3.2%).  You can't easily buy wine or liquor and most restaurants don't even serve liquor.

A lot of movies were (are?) filmed in this area of Utah.  It's referred to as "The Hollywood of the West" so there's a lot of movie memorabilia around town and there are a few campy tourist stores like Denny's Wigwam.  Another odd thing about this area of Utah is that there is espresso EVERYWHERE.  The outfitter store has espresso.  The Subway near Zion has an espresso bar.  We could never figure out why espresso was available everywhere but I suspect it has something to do with the amount European tourists that go to the national parks and Europeans love espresso right?

Apart from the overabundant espresso and lack of abundance in alcohol, Kanab was beautiful and quaint.  It's the perfect place to stay if you want to visit the handful of national/state parks in the area.  The driving times are reasonable and there are many more amenities than are located near the parks.

Thursday Evening (7/30)

For dinner on Thursday we went to the Rocking V.  It's a delicious slightly overpriced restaurant (with liquor and wine) that I suspect caters primarily to tourists.  They have a great vegetarian selection and an art gallery upstairs.

After dinner we wandered around Main Street for awhile and stopped at Calvin T's, a bar attached to Denny's Wigwam.  There was a courtyard in the back that looked like a playful attempt at a movie set and then a very tall pole full of antlers.

Friday - Angels Landing (7/31)

We got up extremely early to get on the road to Zion by 6:30am.  I would definitely recommend going that early.  The drive during the sunrise is beautiful.  There was still parking by the visitor's center and the trail was not crowded at all.  If you aren't able to park by the visitor's center you have to take a shuttle into the park from Springdale.  It was also quite warm on our hike down so that's another good reason to start early.

What I enjoyed about the Angels Landing hike (once you're off of the West Rim trail and onto the Angel's Landing outcrop) is that it keeps going up and up.  Once you turn a corner or get on top of a ridge, there's even more to climb and see.  Like everyone says, if you're afraid of heights or nervous about the drop-offs you shouldn't do this hike.  Dan came up a bit of the way with us and decided to wait near the bottom.  There are some nice flat places for breaks or to wait for your group if you change your mind about continuing.

There are many many spots that are only wide enough for a single file line.  That's why it's so important to do this trail early.  It gets clogged and backed-up.  We were coming down around 10:30am or 11am and had to wait a good 7-10 minutes for the line of up people coming up to pass.

The top of Angels Landing is at 5,800 ft and you can definitely feel the air getting thinner.  For me the most challenging part was the physical effort behind climbing this much at elevation.

For lunch on the way back to Kanab we stopped at Thunderbird Restaurant home of the "ho-made" pies.  They had a beautiful garden with hummingbird feeders by the windows.  All of the hummingbirds almost made up for the overpriced mediocre veggie burgers.

Friday evening we were all exhausted from hiking and getting up so early so we ate dinner in.  Everyone but me was pretty excited about Wet Hot American Summer coming out on Netflix so they watched a few episodes of that.

The property manager stopped by again because the washer was leaking.  Apparently when he moved the washer to fix the hot water heater he dislodged the drain pipe.  Luckily it wasn't much water and he could stop by to fix it quickly.

Saturday - Bryce Canyon (my birthday! 8/1) 

We got up obscenely early again to get on the road to Bryce by 6:30am.  Bryce was about 2 hours away from Kanab and again I don't at all regret getting up early to get there.  By the time we finished the hike the parking lot was packed and there were multiple mobs of young children running around everywhere.  The trail was completely deserted when we started hiking and that's always nice.

Bryce is at pretty high elevation compared to Kanab (around 8,000 feet!) so it was cold in the morning (around 50 degrees).  For some reason we totally didn't think of this so some good advice would be to anticipate it being cold in the early morning and dress appropriately!  It warmed up nicely as the morning went on though.   Once again, the drive was absolutely beautiful.  We stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom and a group of bikers pulled in behind us.  There was maybe 20ish and they all started pumping gas at the same time and apparently broke the gas station.  The attendant came out and told them to stop and then start again one at a time.

We did the Queen's Garden/Navajo Loop trail.  It was absolutely stunning, beautiful, amazing, awe-inspiring etc. etc.  I was a little hesitant that Bryce would be "worth" the long drive from Kanab but it totally was.  The hike is also quite easy.  It descends into the canyon, meanders along the canyon floor among the hoodoos and then climbs back up.  The climb up was a little challenging for me because I had blisters on my heels from not wearing thick enough socks and not tying my boots tight enough but that's something I can do better on for the next hike!  Brandon also sprinted up the climb because he had to pee so he obviously didn't think it was hard either.

After the hike we wanted to get lunch somewhere but there really weren't too many options around the park.  We tried a Mexican restaurant that despite assuring us with multiple signs served "breakfast lunch and dinner" didn't actually serve lunch.  There were a few steak/meat type restaurants but with 2 vegetarians that wouldn't work.  We ended up at a mediocre pizza place in Panguitch that was pretty forgettable other than their delicious onion rings.

Driving to Bryce you'll drive through Dixie National Forest.  It was still early so we wanted to do another shorter hike but didn't want to drive all the way back to Bryce.  We did some expert googling and read that there was a ranger station for Dixie National Forest just down the street from the pizza place.  We tried to stop by there to get info on hikes in the park but they weren't open.  Some of us vaguely remembered a visitor center off the main road so we went back to the park and stumbled upon it.

The people working at the visitor center for Dixie National Forest were very helpful.  They gave us a map and outlined a really nice hike for us in the Red Canyon.  It starts right at the visitor center, meanders around the backwoods but stays close to the road.  It ends on the highway only about half a mile down from the visitor center so you'll walk back on the paved path along the highway.

Despite being so close to Bryce I thought the Red Canyon area looked quite different.  There are still hoodoos but (as the name suggests) the rocks are a bright red.  There are caves and some really interesting plants that I guess are ferns?  There are also lots of spiral trees which kind of blows my mind.  The trail was deserted despite it being later (maybe 2pm?).  I think most people overlook these hikes because they're making a beeline for Bryce.  Just a note that when we stopped by the visitor center there was no water.  I think they were repairing their bathrooms and water fountains?  No word on when water will be available.

Saturday Evening (8/1)

After relaxing and cleaning up back at the AirBnB, we went to a Mexican restaurant called Nedra's.  There is another Mexican restaurant in Kanab that had better reviews but was closed on Saturday for religious reasons.  I think we all would have loved a margarita or two but unfortunately Nedra's does not serve liquor.

Nedra's was pretty terrible.  The service was horrible and after about half an hour a mob of screaming children came in and were split into two booths by themselves (right next to us!) where they proceeded to throw food at each other while their parents got their own booth and were pretending their children didn't exist.  Our food took forever to come out and was only mediocre.  Not only did all of our food take forever but mine took extra-forever because when it was done it was accidentally given to the wrong person.  I would suggest avoiding this restaurant if you ever make it to Kanab.  I really wanted Mexican food so I was thinking "maybe all those Yelp reviews were wrong!" but in this case you should heed all the bad Yelp reviews.

During our extended time spent waiting for our food Brandon was reading about things to do around the area.  He read about a bar called Buckskin Tavern just over the border in Arizona that was known for having the longest bar in the Arizona.  Since it was only about a 5 minute drive we decided to check it out.  I expected quite a long bar and I guess it was long but it wasn't spectacular.  If you're looking for liquor or beer above 4% ABV though this is a great place to head to.  It definitely has a local feel and even though it was a Saturday night it was pretty quiet.  Of course we couldn't stay up too late after getting up at 5am and hiking all day so I can't speak to their late night atmosphere.

Sunday (8/2)

Sunday we did not get up early!  Driving to Bryce and Zion you'll pass by Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and signs for the Coral Pink Sand Dunes.  We decided to sleep in Sunday and check these out since they were close by.  I went to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado last year and was blown away by how surreal it is to see sand dunes in the middle of mountains so I definitely wanted my friends to see this too.

The sand dunes were pretty impressive.  There were groups of dune buggies and ATVs driving all around so it seemed a little risky to go out and hike up/down them. There were a lot more trees and shrubs growing on the sand dunes than there were in Colorado.  One of the informational signs talked about how some of the dunes were stable and didn't move much so that allowed trees to grow on them.

I didn't do any hiking because getting a bunch of sand in the cuts on my heels seemed like a horrible idea.  There is a nice set of bleachers though to sit at and look over the dunes if you don't hike.  My friends went for a walk around the dunes and Brandon saw a crazy bee running around in circles.

We look a long drive through the national monument on the way back.  We didn't do too much research on hikes in this area since our main goal was the sand dunes.  The scenery is beautiful but it seemed much flatter compared to Bryce and Zion.

For lunch we ended up back at Rocking V cafe since we knew their food was good and their drinks weren't 4% ABV.  After lunch we went to the pool in the condo complex and we were surprised to find out that they didn't have any lounge chairs!  What kind of pool makes you lay on the ground?  It was a weird experience but I toughed it out for a little while.

Sunday evening we went to a Japanese place called Fusion House that was delicious.  They had fake beef, chicken and tofu so the vegetarians were pleased.  It was also really spicy (which I love) because they use ghost pepper.  I was delighted and would recommend going there.  After dinner we walked around a side of the town we had never seen before and watched the sunset.

Around 8 or 9pm the power went out all over the town.  For awhile we sat around the living room in the dark listening to podcasts.  I remember I had my headlamp so that helped because there were no flashlights in our AirBnB.  Once it was fully dark we went outside and looked up at the stars for a long time.  It's amazing how many stars you can see when there's no light pollution in the middle of the desert.  What a great treat for our last night!

Monday (8/3)

Our flight left from the Vegas airport around 3pm so we were able to go out to breakfast on Monday to Parry Lodge.  This was apparently the luxury hotel where all the movie stars and crew used to stay so there's lots of Hollywood type memorabilia around.  The service and food were good and the prices reasonable.  I guess this is where lots of local people go for coffee and breakfast and the power outage was the talk of the dining room!

After this we started the drive back to Vegas and there really isn't much more to report.  We listened a bunch of podcasts during the drive (mostly Mystery Show which is fabulous if you haven't heard it yet).  Jessie and Dan dropped us at the airport and they headed on to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

Overall I had a great time!  It was a nice, short, reasonably-priced vacation and the Southwest is so strange and beautiful.  I do want to focus future trips on visiting places outside of the US though.  I have most of our Costa Rica trip planned for February so I'm really looking forward to that.  After that- who knows?  I would love to go to India so maybe that will be our next extra-long trip.