Southwestern Utah Vacation - Day 0

Sunday, April 15, 2013

I'm calling this Day 0 because it was a day spent traveling.  Not very interesting, but I wanted to make note of a couple of things for my own reference.

The outline of our trip:  Fly into Las Vegas on Sunday and get to Zion National Park that night.  We would stay until Wednesday morning and then drive to Bryce Canyon National Park (about 2 hours away) where we would spend one night, giving ourselves Wednesday afternoon and as much of the day on Thursday as we wanted before we headed back to Zion.  We'd have a full day in Zion on Friday and then have a little time on Saturday morning before we had to head back to Las Vegas for a late afternoon flight.

We were able to get direct flights between Hartford and Las Vegas on Southwest.  We arrived in Las Vegas around 5 p.m. Sunday, but by the time we got off the plane and got our rental, I think it was after 6 p.m. before we left town.  B wanted to go down "The Strip" in the hopes of seeing some cool cars, but his parents just wanted to get on the highway.

B's view of "The Strip"

It took us about three hours to get to Spingdale, Utah, the gateway to Zion National Park.  It was 10 p.m. local time.  Nevada is on Pacific Time, but Utah is on Mountain Time.

Side note: The part of Arizona we went through does not observe Daylight Savings Time, so they are still on Mountain Standard time, which in this case is the same time as Pacific Daylight Time.  Interestingly, the Navajo Nation (northeastern Arizona) does observe Daylight Savings Time, but the Hopi Nation, which is within the bounds of the Navajo reservation does not, it stays on Mountain Standard Time like the rest of the state.

We stayed at the Best Western Zion Park Inn and were extremely happy with our choice.  We had a great view from our room of the mountains behind the hotel.  There was a small putting green, a heated pool and hot tub, and the highlight for the boys was the complimentary breakfast buffet at the Switchback Restaurant.  The buffet was quite extensive and provided the fuel the boys needed to get in a solid morning of hiking.

Springdale is a great little town with plenty of restaurants to check out.  I suppose it has neat shops, but if you know me, you know that is not my thing.  We did visit at least three rock shops while we were there and also went to the Fatali Gallery.