September 4, 2025
It is day one of our six-day three-park hiking experience in Utah and I must say I don’t know how it can get better! The trip got off to a rocky start yesterday (after we landed). The United flight was a success and on time, but the real problems started after the flight with trying to navigate the Las Vegas airport; what a disaster. It is a sprawling place that appears to have grown without plan. Getting from our gate to baggage claim took about twenty minutes. Luggage was very slow in appearing and it was another fifteen minutes before we were ready to pick up the rental car. Normally that is a pretty easy thing to do but here you had to queue up in 95 degree heat with no shade just to be crammed onto an over-heated bus that took another fifteen minutes to get to the rental companies. (PS the return trip a week later from the rental agency back the terminal was quick, efficient, and air-conditioned! Not sure why the opposite direction was so fraught with problems.)
Once there we moved quickly and got our car and had to wait another ten minutes for the gate keeper at the exit to make sure we were who we said we were. All in all it was one hour from exiting the plane to exiting the car rental facility, which in hindsight doesn't seem so bad but it was frustrating because every step took twice as long as it should have. We hopped on I-15 North heading for St. George Utah and things went well for ten minutes and then everything stopped. It took another twenty minutes to go about five miles until traffic started to clear up and we could get up to 80 mph towards our hotel. Again, not so bad in hindsight but sitting there in the car and barely moving was frustrating. The scenery in Nevada is desolate and ugly, filled with strip malls, cheap casinos and lots of brown vegetation and brown rocks. Things changed quickly when we hit the twenty-two mile stretch of Arizona - eleven miles of which cuts through the magnificent Virgin River Gorge - it was magical and such a far cry from Nevada. We finally arrived at the Red Rock Resort and the world just went calm.
It is drop-dead beautiful here - surrounded by, as the name suggests - red rock mountains. They are majestic, mysterious, and just plain awe-inspiring! I booked this location since it is at 3000 feet and we wanted a few days to acclimate to a higher elevation than the 500 feet we are used to at home in WV. We had a lovely dinner at the resort restaurant; this being Utah, the wine was expensive and the choices limited, but we did just fine.
In the morning we took a walk around the resort and admired the changing colors of the rocks as the sun got higher and higher. After a quick breakfast of the leftovers from dinner and some fruit that Cindy brought we were in the car driving the mile to the southern entrance of Snow Canyon State Park. We paid our twenty bucks for admission and the helpful guide suggested how to get the most out of the park in one day, laying out our routes and hikes on the map. From one end of the park to the other is a twenty mile ride on newly paved roads and on either side there are parking areas for the trails, all clearly marked. We spent four hours hiking on lava rock, sand, petrified dunes, dirt, and smooth rock, and at every turn we were richly rewarded with magnificent vistas. We were hiking at about 4000 to 4400 feet, acclimating for our next venues on this trip. Some of the hikes were real challenges, especially the lava flows which were smooth and slippery and hard to navigate, but we did it all thanks to our hiking shoes that our dear friends from Ellensburg had recommended to us so many years ago. We saw some native wildlife, white-tailed antelope squirrels, a few birds, lizards, and some wildflowers, but it was mostly desolate desert and it became increasingly hotter as the morning continued. We had been at it for four hours with lots of pauses for water, but when it hit 100 degrees we decided to go back to our lovely suite for lunch and a nap.
By five o'clock we were back at the park and went way up to the other overlook which afforded stupendous views of the entire area. We stopped at one hiking area specifically to see one of the two lava tubes marked on the map. It was a slog - which we knew it would be - but the kicker was the thunder and lightning in the distance that we could see through the mountain pass. Knowing that there was no protection should it rain, we quickened our pace and made it to the lave tubes. They were interesting, but we did not linger. Lava tubes are like vertical caves going far down into the ground; we couldn't tell how deep because we weren't about to get too close to the edge of the opening (about 30 feet across). Made it back to the car and headed home with about an hour to spare before our 7:30 dinner reservation. We cleaned up and got dressed and walked over to the restaurant and within ten minutes of our arrival the heavens opened up and very heavy rain came at an acute angle for at least 30 minutes. Staff stopped to look out the window at this unusual event! It was well over by the time we walked home but the temperature and humidity were quite high and there were large puddles everywhere. Very exciting weather patterns!
In the morning Cindy ran while I walked up to the park entrance and back. The rains had totally transformed the area we had hiked the day before. Where we encountered red dirt yesterday was today a sea of red mud. So happy we did not have to hike through that. There were tons of wild flowers bursting with vivid colors attracting hummingbirds and other creatures in the desert. On a wall above me I saw a road runner just looking down at me so I immediately said, "beep-beep" and then looked to see if an ACME safe was falling on my head! Then there were two California Quail nibbling on some leaves on a branch above them. Such a changed landscape from the much appreciated rain. I met Cindy at a coffee shop we had identified the day before and had a decent cup of joe with a nice Danish pastry, then off to pack for our journey to Zion. We were well pleased with our first stop and we were afraid we might have peaked - but not to worry, Zion is a marvel. More soon!
