Utah 01/05/2014 - 01/09/2014

Dixie rock
bear paw coffee
St. George LDS temple
D
Great Salt Lake Marina
Park City Mountain
Days Inn
Cowboys Club
Arches national park
Zion National Park
Worldmark Wyndham

1/5/14
I went to Utah St. George to visit a friend, Jessica Martinez. Only a 6 hour drive from Los Angeles and 2 hours away from Las Vegas. I left right after work at 2:30 pm and after a few stops arrived at Worldmark Wyndham, a resort where Jessica works at 10:00pm our time, now 11:00pm Utah time. I was chillin' at the lobby reading some books they had on national parks and viewing things we were going to go to. This was the itinerary that i made on Jan 1st:

st. george, utah 4 day trip
January 1, 2014 at 11:41pm

Leave wednesday 6pm Arrive Thursday 1am :)

Go to sleep wake up at 9:30am Thursday

Go to zion national park Go to Kanab utah

Sleep Wake up 8:00 am Friday

Drive to arches national park Drive to salt lake city utah and sleep at a sleazy motel.

Saturday Go riding at park city utah half day visit antelope island

Drive back to st. george

Sleep Sunday

Visit st. george temple

After I got Mcd's for the both of us, I left her alone to work the graveyard shift. She gave me the key to her place where she stays and off I went to sleep. I woke up the next day and off we went on our adventure. We went to the very beautiful Zion National Park. On the way there I saw blue red lights behind me, I had to pull over and got a speeding ticket. The officer gave me a hard time for giving him expired insurance and registration, but gave me a speeding ticket for going 65 on a 60mph zone when at first he told me I was going 75 mph, which I was. The park was the most beautiful park I have ever visited. I haven't been to Yosemite Park yet in California, but I imagine this has to be just as good. First thing I noticed was that the road I was traveling on was red:

While I was in Wyndham I googled the paths we could take for Zion and Ive chosen a pretty easy one where we can get a view. To get to the parking spot we had to drive through a tunnel that was a mile long, the only lights that were in the tunnel were your own car lights. I haven't drove through a tunnel this long before, it was exciting. There were park rangers on both sides of the tunnel. It was pretty narrow so they had to stop us on one side so we can wait for the other side to get through. We were in charge of the baton that one of the ranger gave us because we were the last car and we were instructed to give it to the ranger on our way out.

We parked and took the hour hike up to the view. On the way there we encountered a mountain goat up close which I have never seen before. We went very high up and the day was so clear we saw the whole park (Very much an exaggeration, park is way too big to see all of it but very clear none the less.)

We hiked back down and off we went to Kanab Utah. On the way there leaving Zion through the other end, there were turkey/vultures crossing the road as they pleased, I had to slow down and pass slowly.

The original plan was to visit what is called the Wave at another national park in Kanab, pretty rock formations that I've googled, but I didn't realize that you have to get a ticket months in advance to do. This I learned looking through the pamphlets at Wyndham, but we went to the city of Kanab anyway. There we found a place to eat at the rockin V cafe. We drove around Kanab for a bit, but everything seemed to be closing down so we drove back home. We had to drive home through zion park, and again had to cross the tunnel. This time it was snowing, and driving through the slow falling snow, it made it look like we were passing through a time warp at maximum speed when in fact I was driving 20mph at most scared of the icy roads. We tried to get a video of what were looking at it didn't turn out real well, guess you had to be there to experience it.
After we got out of zion and the road got easier to drive on, I started to speed up and go the suggested 75mph. All of a sudden I see 6 mountain goats right on the street hanging out. I slammed on the breaks not to hit them. The car skidded but still went straight and it was slow enough for the goats to realize that I was coming and they nonchalantly moved out of the way. Jessica didn't blink an eye, it was like an everyday thing and she carried on with our conversation we were having at the time while my heart was racing. We finally got to St. George. Jessica showed me around town and we ate CUSTARD which I have never tried by itself before. It was yummy, my new favorite type of ice cream/yogurt.
The next day we went to visit the Arches National Park. Arches is 4 hours away next to Salt Lake City. The park was half snow and dry land, it was beautiful. We walked in to the visitors center to ask which one we should go. They had a computer asking you how long do you want the hike to be. It was very well set up so I put 2 hours and it showed us the direction on where to go. We went to see the most famous arch in the park. On the way up there we saw an old house that a man used to live in, I can't believe people lived in such small houses back then. A family in one room?

and hieroglyphs on rocks.

The path got very slippery covered in ice, we slipped so many times. Just around the corner at the end of the hike we came across the arch. A huge rock formation that are pressed against each other. Looks like hands assembled in a prayer.

After taking a few pictures back down the icy path we go. We made it without getting injured, slowly but surely. We still had time to visit a few more arches, we saw what jessica pointed out were "elephant arches" as you can see in the next picture why they were called that

Also we visited the beautiful window arch

We went to a few more, then went to a restaurant called cowboys club and went on to Days inn to sleep. We woke up ate the continental breakfast there and drove over to park city mountain. Jessica freaking out if she should go snowboarding or not. We came across a rental shop right on the mountain where we convinced her to go and try snowboarding. She rented the board, and bought goggles. After going to the bar and Jessica drinking 4 shots of confidence juice we went snowboarding. She wanted to take group lessons while I was off on my own. The snow was at least 4 feet deep full of powder. It was snowing on the mountain the whole time we were there. I'm a decent snowboarder but I couldn't snowboard down because so much snow. The first time I fell off the side of the mountain because I couldn't stop. Luckily the snow was high enough to stop me from just tumbling down the mountain.

The second time around I couldn't stop at all just kept falling face forward. I realized that these aren't the conditions to snowboard, so I rented skii's. A much better outcome with skiis. Jessica liked snowboarding she said everything hurts especially her butt and wrists. She says that she wants to go again. Before heading home I wanted to try the lake water to see if it's salty. So we went to the salt lake marina and found a place where it hits the water. Unfortunately it was all iced over. I figured since it was salt it wouldn't ice. I was wrong. I did the Jesus Christ thing and walked on the water for a bit and we left to eat. We ate ramen at Dojo. It was very good, afterwards we decided to walk around town. We hit shops and walked through a small park or a "square" this is how they call it in Utah. We were crossing the street to get to my car and we were following this guy crossing the street and he turns around and asks me what i wanted. I said nothing and what I thought was a club he was going to, turned out was a skid row type place where a lot of homeless people were hanging out. It was quite a shock to see especially when I wasn't expecting it. We had to cross to get to my car, it was very sad to see that the soup kitchen was packed with the homeless. We didn't have time to visit antelope valley so we drove back to St. George.
The day after, we went to the St. george temple for a free tour. They explained how the temple was made and gave us a brief story about the mormon religion. They weren't pushy or anything which i appreciated.

We went to another temple where they call it something like the tambernuckle. It was basically an old temple, the first built in St. George and is used as a museum piece. Fun fact, the stairs of that place was built by Mitt Romney's great great grandfather. We went to eat at bearpaw coffee and then went to Dixie rock where you can see the whole city from:

Then continued to hike to see a room underneath the rocks with a fireplace.

That was the last thing I did in Utah. Hugged Jessica goodbye and back to reality I went. Thank you Jessica for letting me stay in Utah and for a funtastic time!