St. George, Utah

 May 13, 2021

Leaving St. George is a little bitter sweet. This is one of those All American cities. Everything is so clean and manicured. Everyone is outside either riding bikes, the electric scooters that are placed all over town for your enjoyment, or just gathering in the open air. 

I was not real happy with our RV park, Hillside Palms, they tried to put us in a gravel parking lot with only electricity and they have no bathrooms or laundry.  So how were we gonna do a week there.  I finally asked about two open spots among the grass and the other, not in storage, RVs.  They let us have one of those, but they must have been built for RV without slide outs, because there was not gonna be enough room in the one next to us, we were definitely encroaching. We did have a great view of the city at night.  They light up the ‘D’ and the Temple in the city center.  Then  towards the mountain is this beautiful home, almost in the RV park, just up a driveway.  I found out this is a VRBO that the prior owner lived in, but the current owners inherited the park and home upon his death.

There are supposed to be two RVs - see the divider

That house on the hill behind the park

The ‘D’ lit up on the hill

The view of the city from our spot - the big white Mormon Temple

In this area they often put the initial of the town on a nearby mountain, but this is St. George, so why is there Dixie on the side of a hill? There is also a ‘D’ on another mountain that is lit up brightly at night. I discovered the reason for that.  When Brigham Young brought families here to settle they found that crops similar to the Dixie region of the southern states grew well here.  So this area became the Dixie Region of Utah.

Pioneer park is a public park at the top of the ‘Sugar Loafs’ above the city and specifically where the ‘Dixie’ is written on the tallest sugar loaf in the park. They have an amazing desert botanical garden and many amazing trails with bridge formations, narrows and some very spectacular views of the city.  They also have what appeared to be a large movie screen on a peak.  I never could find out when they would be showing movies so maybe that is not what it is?  As we walked one of the trails we kept hearing this loud rush that sounded like waves blowing out through holes in Cozumel.  We finally found the source.  It was a pipe coming out of the ground with a bowl underneath.  I went to investigate and the water was very cold.  I assume they put the water bowl there for parched animals to refresh themselves.  I just wonder if that would be a geyser had they not capped it with a pipe.

 

This thing looked fake

Who knew the desert had so much color. 

We saw some starting to bloom in Arizona, but these (and many others) were in full bloom

 

We actually had a rare sighting of a bird called a Verdin.  It is primarily found in Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona.  We saw one here in Utah.  He was a beautiful little guy.  We have really gotten into looking at birds and use a couple of apps to determine their identities.  One, BIRDNET, uses the sound to identify them while the other is AUDUBON and you can enter their characteristics to identify them.  We each have our own binoculars now and are really enjoying our birdwatching.  My only problem is remaining still long enough to have them get close. I guess my next purchase may have to be a fancy camera.

Rare sighting for the area - The Verdin

I cannot take credit for this photo, but isn’t he stunning.

Another cool sighting in this park was an endangered Mojave Desert Tortoise.  When I tried to get the selfie he turned his back on me, but he just kept on munching like he wasn’t bothered at all.

Just me and my endangered tortoise.

Snow Canyon State Park is another cool place we visited.  I wanted to walk the Scout Cave Trail because I really wanted to go into a cave.  We took off a little late in the day and it got pretty warm.  The first part of the trail is open desert until you finally get into the canyon.  Interestingly enough, the outer edge of the canyon is covered in beautiful and large private homes.  As we got to that side I felt like I was invading their space a bit. Can you imagine looking out your back door and constantly seeing strangers walking around?  Anyway, once we entered the canyon we lost the trail.  We went off in search of some strange bird calls and walked way to the other end of the canyon.  We saw a ton of quail milling around out there not giving us a second look.  We also spotted some other beautiful birds we had never before seen.  It was quite an adventure.  Dennis finally pulled out the  ALLTRAILS app and we found the trail.  I love that app too, but it will wear you phone battery out on the trail if you keep it on. I need to upgrade the app so we can just download the maps.  So, we had to turn around and go back through the canyon towards all those houses.   We got pretty lucky to get our bearings out there because we had very little service in this vast wilderness.  Finally, we saw the caves in the distance.  There were two of them and we kept on going.  We traveled through the canyon for some time before climbing back out towards the caves.  Suddenly we were faced with the tallest stone staircase I have ever seen.  I almost gave up and just went back, after all, we had walked the entire length of this canyon, by accident - remember we got lost.  But alas, we began the climb.  I had to stop a few times to get my breath. I don’t have very long legs and some of these steps were pretty darned tall for me.  When we got to the top of the staircase we realized we were not going to be able to get to the actual caves.  We just don’t have that kind of rock climbing skills.  So we turned around very disappointed - until we looked up and saw the reason these caves were called scout caves.  The view was spectacular! You could see forever.  So we stood and stared for a while before heading back down into the canyon.  We kept the ALLTRAILS app going so we could find the path back out of the canyon on the way back.  Then out of no where - another first!  There was a wild bee hive in a tree knothole. We heard the buzz for some time before we came upon it.  I took a picture but the bees really did not come out. I wish I had taken a video so you could hear that buzz.

One thing that makes this place so unusual is the lava rocks from ground fissures.  

Stark black against such red rocks

They gathered them up to line the first part of the trail

Beehive.  I should have videoed so you could hear that sound.

The stairs looking back down into the canyon

The two Scout Caves

The reason they were called ‘Scout Caves’ - What a view 

We had to be very careful out here because all of the trail markings had DNR on them.  We assumed that meant they DNR - Do Not Resuscitate - if they find you on the trail. LOL

One thing I really wanted to see while we were here was Zion National Park.  We discovered that a great deal of the park can only be seen by shuttle or tour service.  Tickets for the shuttle were available at 5:00 pm of the day before.  Well, we never were able to get tickets, dagnabit, but we drove through the park anyway.  The trails we wanted to take were all on the route we couldn’t go on so it was a bit of a disappointment.  We did see some pretty terrain, but that has been the case throughout Utah.  As a matter of fact, I believe this is my favorite state so far.  Even beating out Arizona.  Similar views here without the dust in my eyes and mouth.

 

This tunnel is a mile and a half long through the mountains

We found a brewery, but but then discovered it was also a Distillery, Silver Reef Brewing Company.  They also served a few local wines.  I had the spirits flight while Dennis had the beer flight.  The brandy was light in color which I found unusual, but it was really good.  The bourbon I could do without, but the others I would buy if I were in the mood.  The tasting room was just a couple of tables in the workspace surrounded by barrels and stainless vats.  They are building an outside area that overlooks the beauty of Utah for future visitors.

These guys have quite a fun senses of humor

‘What would Chubacca do?’ ‘ Red Rum’

 

Another thing I found interesting is the enormous number of Teslas you see around here.  Almost as many as in Vegas.  So I had to look up the prices of homes and they are pretty average, $300,000-400,000. I cannot believe that some of those houses on the hills were in that range, but whatever.

Our next stop is in Mount Pleasant, Utah and we hope to get to Salt Lake while we are there.  

Until next time.  Hasta Luego!