Last week I took a trip to Utah with three friends and had an incredible time! One of my friends is from Utah and her family is still out there so we were lucky enough to have a place to stay in Salt Lake as well as St George. We flew into SLC on an evening flight from Newark that landed at 9:30pm and then had 4 full days to spend together.
Day 1
Breakfast at Beaumont Bakery was the perfect start to the day.
We toured SLC seeing “The U” (The University of Utah) and State Capitol along with downtown. We also took a drive to Park City where we walked the main street and could see people skiing right into town. The weather was very mild and the town reminded me a lot of Telluride in Colorado.
We ended the day with dinner at Kitchen 88 (so good!) and then drove about 3.5 hours to St George.
Day 2
We got a pretty early start at Zion and did the Emerald Pools and Sand Bench Trails which were both beautiful and not too strenous. The free shuttle system is so easy to use after we parked in Springdale. We then headed to Kolob Canyon which is in a part of Zion that is less crowded. It was an incredible view at the end of the hike and was definitely one of the highlights.
Dinner Angelica’s Kitchen - awesome Mexican
Day 3
We spent the morning at the Tuacahn Market which had so many great vendors and beautiful views. They have an amphitheatre there as well- what a cool place to see a show! We stopped at the Red Hills Desert Garden (free admission) before heading back to our friend’s pool. After all of the hiking we had done the day before, we all needed some downtime.
Dinner Aubergine Kitchen - there were so many things on the menu that looked amazing and healthy. I wish we had a location here in New Jersey!
Day 4
We spent the morning hiking the Elephant Arch trail which is such a hidden gem! It’s about 3.5 miles round-trip and has a big payoff with views
After lunch we made our way to the Kanarravill Slot Canyon about 35 minutes from St George. It’s a 4 mile round-trip hike through a river and then we went up a ladder that leads to the Kanarra Creek Waterfall. Permits are required and booked online here. Because they limit admission to 150 people per day, it was never crowded.
Dinner- Anasazi Steakhouse was the ideal place to spend our last night of vacation. I especially loved the chocolate fondue for dessert!
Day 5 and Day 6
This should have been an easy travel day home but turned into a complete nightmare. We left St George at 9am and our flight was supposed to leave Las Vegas at 12:45pm. When we boarded, the pilot said that it would take 4 hours and 4 minutes to get to Newark. But the weather didn’t look great in Newark so the pilot said he would update us on our route as we got closer which I took as a bad sign. Sure enough, we made it to PA and then the plane started to do circles in the air several times and suddenly the map switched the destination to Cleveland. The pilot said that Newark wasn’t accepting planes and we needed to refuel. After waiting several hours in the airport, we were finally told around midnight that we would not be leaving until 10:30am. Luckily we were able to get two hotel rooms for the night and got a Lyft to take us there from the airport.
The next morning we got back on the same plane (with the same passengers) and after we were all boarded the pilot said that they found “chips” on the exterior of the plane and they needed to determine if these were serious. He said it could take “an hour or two” so we all had to get off of the plane. It ended up being about 4 hours of waiting before we were allowed to get back on the plane (the pilot said it turns out the chips were just cosmetic paint chips) and we finally took off. We ended up landing in Newark 24 hours after taking off in Las Vegas!!
Despite the terrible journey home, I would do it all again for the fantastic time we had together in Utah!!
