It's been long since I got a chance to write something, work's been keeping me real busy but I took a couple of days off and went on a trip to Bryce Canyon, Zion and Las Vegas.
My husband and I have been wanting to visit the national parks in Utah for a while now, this September we decided we'll make a trip to Bryce Canyon and Zion National park. Although, we could have flown into the airport at St.George, we figured we'll fly into Las Vegas, NV (primarily due to the cheaper tix). We reached Las Vegas on Saturday night (one of our friends joined us there), and we had booked our stay in a small town named Mesquite, 70 miles north of Vegas. Since it was night time and Vegas seemed busy we decided we'll first spend some time in Vegas and then head out to our destination. We spent some time in a couple of Casinos and eventually headed out to Mesquite.
We had booked a condo in Mesquite and it turned out to be a really nice place to stay, we made day trips from Mesquite to Bryce Canyon and Zion. On our first day in Mesquite, we made a trip to Bryce Canyon, it was a really long drive and there really wasn't that much scenery on the way (until you reached red canyon, which is about 10-20 mins from Bryce). The lack of scenery, hectic work from past week and staying late and playing slots at Vegas all caught up to me and I fell asleep. When we reached red canyon, I was woken up. The place looked fantastic, I haven't seen red color rocks before, so it was all the more exciting. It was different rock formations but it looked brilliant. Checkout the photos of red canyon below:
After taking a few pics there, we were back on our way to Bryce Canyon, we reached bryce within the next half hour and we decided we'll cover all the points from last to first as recommended so that we can be at the sunset point during sunset. Bryce Canyon overall was a very photographer friendly place, I think we would have gotten wonderful pics if we had been there in the morning, it was already afternoon by the time we reached. The good thing was that the sun wasn't facing us therefore we were still able to take pics (except that the lighting wasn't as awesome as it could have been). We moved from one point to the other taking pictures of the landscape and unique rock formations that we could find in the spot we were in. We eventually got to the Bryce point, at which point things got really interesting, we loved the sight of the amphitheater, it was huge and so unique, I've never seen anything like that before, it did look like an arena full of people, which in this case were the hoodoos!! We eventually went to the sunset point, where you look right down at the maze of these hoodoos. We spent a lot of time there. I didn't take a tripod with me so I had to just sit and watch my husband and our friend taking pics of the canyon. Not having a tripod with me was sad but I was really happy to just be there and breathe in the air :).
Apparently Bryce canyon is also famous for star gazing, too bad we couldn't stay the night there. We headed back to Mesquite after sunset. On our way back we decided to stop somewhere and have dinner, we were in a town named Panguitch and there was this restaurant which was named the "
Flying M Restaurant". We were so famished, we were delighted to see a restaurant in that small town. We went in and the lady at the counter told us to wait for a few mins so that they could get a table ready for us (this lady vanished in a few mins), we stood there for more than 20 mins, desperate to just sit down and have food!! Finally another lady who was serving a few tables walked towards us, we were so happy thinking that our turn has come! She looks at us and says "we are CLOSED and have been for 10 minutes", when we told her what happened, the best excuse she could come up with was "the cook threw away everything". We wouldn't have been so disappointed if they had simply told us upfront that they were closed (despite having the open light on), instead they made us wait and this lady had stared at us so many times until she finally made up her mind to come and tell us that they were really closed!!!! Even without having to taste their food, this restaurant qualifies for a 1/5 stars!! Luckily there was a subway right across the street and it happened to be really good one too (long live that subway).
The next day morning, we headed out to Zion, it was a really hot day in Utah with temperatures over a 100F, we ate at a small cafe before boarding the shuttle, the food was expensive on top of that we were charged an $8 service fee. I forgot the name of the place but will update the post with the name sometime soon. The food really took too long to come out, finally we had our lunch and went to Zion. Zion also has points of interest and it roughly has about 8-9 points of which most of them had nothing interesting. we skipped a few and finally came to the weeping rock, I was told that it was one of the largest hanging gardens, all I got to see was a lot of moss!! we started hiking to see the hidden canyon, I went half way, the others went a lot further but we couldn't find any signs which indicated where the trail would fork for us to get to hidden canyon, with really hot weather, it was turning out to be an exercise in futility! we all headed back down. We then went to the big bend, where there is absolutely nothing, except that you get to see the same set of rocks!! In the end we got to the "temple of sinawava" which I think is Zion's saving grace (still not as awesome as it sounds, I was picturing it to be something like the stuff I saw in LOST)!! We walked alongside virgin river and got to the narrows!! It was nice walk. We didn't hike the virgin river (hiking the narrows). I was already disappointed with Zion and the weather, I decided to stop and take rest. Others headed further down the river, took a bunch of pics and returned. I was happy to board the shuttle and head back. It was really dark, close to 9 pm and on our way back, we saw a fox. We also saw a bunch of deers just hanging out. After a tiresome day, there was some excitement, when my co-travelers decided to photograph the stars and the cliffs.
We boarded the springdale shuttle at 10 pm and got off were we parked our car. Most restaurants were closed, we finally found Oscar's Cafe, where they were willing to give us a table. They were very nice and the food was really nice too, they gave generous portions and they didn't charge us any extra service fee. That was the best meal we had in our first two days of the trip.
The next day morning, there were thunderstorms and we weren't sure if we could visit the hoover dam, instead we decided to visit the Kolob Canyon, which happens to be the sister of Zion Canyon (part of Zion that has separate access). It's a 5 mile drive but what we wanted to experience in Zion, we experienced here. The huge rock formations, the gorge, etc...were wonderful. There was about 5 -8 spots and all of them happened to have unique views and made up for excellent photography. The cloud covers resulting from thunderstorms made up for even better photos :)
we were very happy with Kolob Canyon, we headed back to Vegas slightly before sunset. Vegas wasn't as busy as it was on Saturday night, we were able to walk the streets pretty freely. We took a bunch of pictures of the Bellagio, Eiffel tower, Statue of Liberty, etc...at the beginning it was really interesting, but the fact that everything was fake started sinking in slowly and after sometime I totally lost interest, we went to the casino at Mirage and played a game of blackjack and left. We stayed at the MGM Grand and we chose to eat at the lunch buffet there. I am a vegetarian and didn't have high expectations to begin with, I thought the buffet would be decent, but I was wrong. The buffet was abysmal!! Poor choice of food offerings coupled with really cold food was terrible. Dessert buffet was decent but not great. I have been to better dessert buffets!!
We played some more games at the slot machines and then left :)
Despite Zion being a disappointment, we had a great trip overall, we were so happy to have visited Kolob Canyon which we didn't even know existed until we saw a road sign on our way to Bryce!! This was my first trip with a DSLR camera and for the first time I had the power of polarizer, which made a real difference in the kind of pics I was able to capture :). The trip made for very good learning experience when it came to using DSLR. My advise is if you're planning a trip to Bryce and Zion, set aside at least half a day to visit Kolob :). Review of the vacation rental is Mesquite would be coming soon!!!
