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We took a trip to southwestern Utah via Las Vegas last week. Our itinerary was to stay in St George Utah, and visit Zion National Park. We landed in Las Vegas Monday, and spent the night there. We drove about 2 hours north to St George Utah on Tuesday morning, arriving just after lunch time.

This was Sheri's first visit to Utah, so we had lunch at Nielsen's Frozen Custard. So after a hearty sandwich, we had our first of many frozen custards. For those of you new to this, it is richer and creamier than frozen yogurt, and smoother than ice cream.

We wound our way over to Snow Canyon, and our hotel, the Inn at Entrada. It is a fairly new resort, about 2 years old, and still being developed. All of the rooms are casitas, and surrounded by spectacular Utah scenery. It is in the heart of red rock country, with a Johnny Miller golf course, spa, restaurant, and adventure center.

At check in, the attendant leads each guest to their casita in a golf cart, and opens your garage with a door opener. The one touch entry switch does everything: opens the shades, turns on the lights and ceiling fan, and lights the fireplace. We had a very large studio casita with a kitchen and very large bathroom with jacuzzi tub.

After a short rest, we headed to Benja Thai and Sushi Restaurant in downtown old St George. We got to meet the owner, Benja, a really gracious lady from Bangkok. Our waitress was quite interesting also. She is a school teacher by day, and waits tables at night to earn travel money. We shared many stories about travel and adventure. We also gave her our SE Asia travel expert's name for her future use. We also had the best chicken curry outside of SE Asia, and a wonderful mango sticky rice for dessert.

We woke up early the next morning and headed to Zion before the expected afternoon rain and snow storm. We drove about 90 minutes up to Zion National Park. Zion was created by the waters of the Virgin River, and contains many unique plant and animal species. Also, fourteen hiking trails of various lengths and difficulty are well marked. The 11,000 foot red rock cliffs against the white dusting of snow made it a spectacular sight. We drove through a mile long rock tunnel built in 1930!!!! It was a little too cold to hike, but we drove most of the park and headed to a late lunch in the nearby town of Springdale.

We found a great southwestern dive called Oscars, and enjoyed the warmth of the food and the fire. By the way, the 20th was Sheri's birthday, so we headed back to Nielsen's for a frozen custard sundae. We got back to the Inn just in time for a huge, wet, and windy rain/snow storm covering most of southern Utah.

After a nice rest, we headed back to Benja's for dinner. We had the drunken noodles this time, and they were also fantastic. We met the owner's husband, and insisted on the same waitress as the night before. We can't wait to go back. We also passed an oil change place called Slick Willie's, which we thought quite clever.

I will send photos once I get them uploaded this afternoon. We are told that Bryce Canyon National Park is even more spectacular, so that will be a trip for another time. We headed on to Vegas and visited our friends in Summerlin for a few days, before heading home. This was an unexpectedly restful, fun and interesting trip.

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