Home ·· News Room ·· Prints ·· Licensing ·· Gallery ·· About Us ·· Contact Us ·· Articles ·· Services Utah and Nevada Road trip report, December 28, 2005 to January 9, 2006 Updated February 13, 2006 Page 1 of 5 Next page
	(Note: This trip is as I wrote it, with only spelling corrected. Grammar is out when you're writing a road trip report as you go.) Download the whole report in Acrobat PDF   See the Utah Gallery  See the Nevada Gallery December 28, 2005 Wednesday Left home at noon, mileage 22,550. Drove up to Vegas...Since I left at noon, I didn't get up there until well after sunset. Called Lance to see if I could recall where the steak and lobster was served cheap but he didn't recall. After a little driving around, I found the steak and shrimp at Frontier, one of the older casinos. I wanted lobster for some stupid reason so I wandered around to the Rio for the World Buffet. Nice idea but with an hour and a half wait and I was hungry then, I was starting to regret passing up the Frontier. Hell bent on lobster, Outback steak house beaconed and got my business. Definitely not cheap as Frontier but I got my meal. Next time, don't want to be all hung on something, just take them as they come. I've never really done it that way and now I know why. After a pleasant meal, I was pretty darned tired, not having slept well the night before. Real tired, having trouble keeping my eyes open. I wanted to make St. George in Utah but at 1.5 hours away, that wasn't going to happen. Made it to Casa Blanca (?) Casino about 1/2 hour north of Las Vegas, just before the gorge. Nearly falling asleep at the wheel twice made me get off the road, pull into the parking lot and hit the sack. I was so tired, I didn't even bother trying to get a room at the casino. The Palms by Rio wanted $80 so I wasn't too hot on that. Probably a mistake again. Sleep finally! At 10pm, Set the alarm for 5:30am. Tough time getting to sleep oddly. Had a nightmare that I was falling asleep at the wheel and thrashed around to wake myself up. Yes, I was at the wheel asleep but in a parking lot. December 29, 2005 Thursday Got my tired self up and immediately going down the gorge to St. George and Denny's for breakfast. Happily, I enjoyed the beautiful pink cloud sunrise from inside rather than out on some vista. So, I headed north, bypassed Zion because I've been there before and took my first turn off at Kolab Canyon, the north part. Still want to get to the Zion portion one day... Kolab canyon turn off north of Cedar city is either an early morning, pretty cloud sunrise spot where the clouds above are just getting morning sun or an afternoon spot because the canyon predominantly faces west. I drove directly to the top but took note of the various locations to stop. The top has a nice vista of the entire canyon but there was a sign and a tree in the way. No problem. I backed the truck onto the sidewalk up against the railing and tossed the tripod onto the truck bed. Wanted to make sure and get the shots done before some enforcement appeared. They wouldn't take kindly to my parking on their sidewalk. Got some nice shots of the view but wished to have been there 2 hours before - the clouds would've been pink and balanced against the foreground. Sunset would've been good, too. But, I made something out of what I had and moved on. Picked up a brochure for Bryce at the Kolab visitors center and gave Bryce a call. Thank goodness because apparently the 2 highways across to the 89 were really bad, so I went the lady's suggestion of going all the way up to the 20 and cutting over. It worked very well and the drive was quick and painless. Stopped at Bear Valley junction and checked out the abandoned store. It's amazing how out west all these places are created with blood and sweat and then one day they're abandoned. Nothing too interesting inside now but at one time I'm sure there was. Tore on down to Panguitch and had lunch at a diner across the street from the Cowboy cafe which was closed. Nice little patty melt but at $6.50, a bit on the expensive side. The balance to that was I picked up a place mat that gave a bundle of information on the SR-12, one of the American scenic byways, a special designation. Armed with that, I was off on a more in depth exploration. Got to Red Canyon pretty quick after that and began exploring up the area on the trail just before the Red Canyon visitors center. Being closed, I couldn't snoop around but it was probably better because the day was wearing on and I wanted to hit Bryce well before sunset. So, off to Bryce. Bryce must be a big destination because the entrance fee is $20. Thank goodness for my parks pass. Checked out the Visitor's center museum and they had an excellent video on the area. Bought it for dad, even. I never buy those Drove on down to the end of the road, Rainbow Point. Not very interesting, the Grand Canyon is better. The area around Bryce amphitheater, near Sunrise and Sunset points is the reason the park exists. Naturally, the park speed limit is a paltry 35 and there were rangers everywhere pulling people over. Be warned. Got to Sunset point and set up some shots, nothing stunning but nice. Met another HP early retirement refuge. They must've paid them 3 years wages from what I could gather. Dang! That must be nice. We talked shop a bunch. He's one of those guys who's got the top Canon gear and has bought and sold a bunch. Crazy! We were both frozen so he took his leave. I warmed up, changed gear and shot some starlight shots with the trees lit by a bank of flashes. I don't think they were great but it's something different. Had to decide what to do and I didn't eat, plus the need of a shower. So, drove to the park entrance and found Ruby's Inn for $44, got them down to $40. The place was actually pretty busy and come to find out that during the April-October season, the place books up 3 months in advance. Ay yah! That's ridiculous and they have 600+ rooms. Plus the surrounding places book. Wow. Good thing I'm winter traveling and even then it's decently full. Bunch of foreigners around, both Asian and European. Got to dinner at 7:30pm and it's a good thing because they stop serving at 8:30pm. I had a tiny wait. This place must suck in the summer. There's a park shuttle so you know it sucks. Am now by the nice fireplace enjoying the evening before heading to bed and getting up for an early freeze fest for sunrise at Sunrise Point. It's 28 degrees F now and will be 17 or so in the morning, with wind chill about 0. Ugh. December 30, 2005 Friday Got up at 5am and it was 18 degrees F. Not too bad an estimate. It stayed that temperature the entire time. Unfortunately, the overhead cloud cover is thick so there wasn't any sun to work with after the initial rise on the hoodoos. Packed it up, headed off to check out and for breakfast at Ruby's Inn. Debated for quite a while about taking one of the plane or helicopter rides around the area. The copter doesn't run during the off season so the suggestion was to do the Monument Valley tour. I wanted to get breakfast to think about it and naturally the flight guy wasn't there when I returned and no one seemed to know where he was. That's what I get for thinking. Next page
	This site Copyright © 2000-2005 Aaron Linsdau, all rights reserved.