3 States

Today, we had a bit of a slow start, but this time we hadn’t planned to have a slow start. We checked out of the hotel, in which I slept really nice.

We went to Walmart to buy ourselves some lunch, because we were planning on spending most of the day in Zion National Park. I took some home made pasta salad with me for lunch.

We headed off to Zion, stopping in Springdale. Here, we rented some hybrid bikes. We drove our bikes up to the visitor centre, were we gained some information about the park. We then took the shuttle bus, putting our bikes on the bike rack at the front of the bus, all the way up to the top of the canyon, so we only had to ride down! We stopped a few times, once to have lunch at the riverside. I would describe Zion as a little oasis in a hot desert. There are lots of plants and trees there, while the park self lies in the middle of a desert.

During one of our stops, we saw an elk standing right next to us, with her children (which were probably just about a day old)!

We drove our bikes back to town, got in our car, and drove through the desert towards....

VEGAS! We went from Utah, to Arizona, to Nevada, gaining one hour of time as we drove through a time zone!

We drove to our hotel straight away, to freshen ourselves up. Driving, we saw some of the famous buildings, like the stratosphere hotel, the pyramid, and many many lighted billboards. We are staying at Downtown The Grand Hotel and Casino, in the northern part. After we had freshened up, we went to dinner at VegeNation, a nice vegan restaurant. Really lovely food. Unfortunately, when you are with a larger group, you have to pay 20% gratitude over your food. The food was really delicious though! I had quesadillas, with beans, sweet potato, some veggies and really tasteful sauce.

When we headed towards the strip, as it was already dark, the city came alive. There was some live music, people were all over the streets and there were lights everywhere. We took an Uber to go to the strip, visited some of the hotels, under which circus circus, where we saw a woman riding a unicycle. We also had to play at a few of the casinos. I actually turned one dollar into 5,35 by playing deal or no deal with just one dollar! It was a lot of fun to do and to see! After seeing some of the madness, we were all pretty tired, so we went back to our hotel for a good night rest. See you tomorrow! Cheers!

Bryce Canyon

As we said, a slow start today. We took our time with breakfast, did some planning for our next stops, had a shower, repacked all our luggage, and I think it was about 11 AM we left the place to visit Bryce Canyon.

Bryce Canyon is a good place to do by car. We stopped at a few view points. The place looks awesome! It contains Hoodoos, sand stone created pillars. It looked like someone putted it there, but it is just nature doing is thing. We wanted to see this hoodoos a little better, so we went for a little hike (1.5 miles) down the canyon. Once your down there, you can really appreciate the massiveness and size of the canyon and the hoodoos, so it was a really cool thing to do. The hike was really steep, so it was a pretty tough one to do!

After the hike, we drove through the rest of the park, stopped a few times, and then called it a day. We picked up a sandwich at subway (it was already 4 PM so we were all really hungry, or hangry), and drove towards the next town; st. George. It was a 2 hour drive, but compared to some of the other drives, this was a quite boring one. It was rather flat, and the roads were pretty much straight all the way.

In st. George, we are staying at st. George Inn and Suites, in a room with two queen size beds. It is a really nice hotel, with some swimming pools and a gym as well. We went for a swim and then headed off to get some dinner at a pasta place. Unfortunately, the place closed early today, so we had to eat at the place across the road, called George’s Corner. It turned out to be a place with insanely tasty food! I had a veggie salad bowl kind of meal, with beans, avocado, mushrooms, paprika, and a lot of other stuff, which was super tasteful! It was a great place, a really nice place to go for a good meal!

Tomorrow we will see Zion national park. But first, a good night sleep again. Cheers!

Slot canyon

We set the alarm for 7 AM, had some nice breakfast and went off to the Grand Staircase Escalante national monument.

Again, we entered the park with our pass, and headed off to the visitors centre. There, they gave us a nice hike to do, through a narrow slot canyon, with a little creek flowing through it. The hike was called the Willis Creek trail, and was about 6 miles long (to go back and forth through the canyon). It was the funnest thing to do, as you had to cross the creek all the time! We walked through three narrow slots in a row, jumping over and running through the little creek.

Once back, it was really hot, so we got in our cars, took another look at the park, passed a really rollercoaster like dirt road, and moved on to Bryce. We ate at a steak house/pub nearby (which was so busy that at one time there was a queue outside) and then all went to bed really tired. We decided to go for a good night sleep and set the alarm relatively late, about 8.30 AM. See you then! I’m going to have a good night sleep in my king bed! Goodnight! Cheers!