No where to eat in Utah

Our last stop in our whirlwind tour of National Parks on the West Coast was Zion National Park in Utah. 

Like many foreigners, I had never heard of this park before but it was only at the insistence of my sister that we decided to visit.  And I’m so glad we did.  

Zion and Utah are beautiful – the landscape made up of an intriguing mix of green  trees and dark orange rocks that make up the deep valleys that traverse the state.  

Zion National Park is 45 minutes’ drive from St George, a small city near the Utah-Arizona border. Unbeknown to us when we booked but Memorial Weekend falls early in June and every man, women and their dog in Utah had flocked to Zion for the weekend of our visit.  This meant horrific lines for everything – an hour to wait for the shuttle within the park, no parking and hikes stacked to the brim with walkers.  

On our first day we did the iconic Angels Landing walk.  This is the most famous hike at Zion because you must walk along a narrow spine with a 1500ft drop on either side in order to reach the viewing point.  None of us managed to get the whole way along the spine.  For me it was just way, way too high not helped by the lack of safety cables on either side of the ridgeline.  My sister and Dad got further but gave up simply because there were lines of people queued up along the spine. They felt it was the path was getting too dangerous as some hikers were trying to push ahead of others. It was something of a miracle that nothing happened as hundreds of people on the path were an accident waiting to happen.  

On our second day we chose to walk to the more secluded Observation Point directly opposite the Angels Landing viewing point.  The views from this walk were spectacular – with a great view looking back towards the valley, the rock slowly changing from red to orange starkly contrasted by the dark green trees on the valley floor below.  We took pictures on a very nervy cliff edge (as can be seen by my get-me-out-of-here grimace) and ate hummus and pita bread under the shade of bam brushes. 

Speaking of food you’re now probably wandering how the title of this post relates at all to what I have written.  I promise you I wouldn’t downright lie to you like that. Maybe what this post should really have said is “ nowhere to eat in Utah on a Sunday”. 

The Church of the Latter Day Saints still plays a huge role in society in Utah and this deep-set Christianity is reflected in the opening hours of shops and restaurants.  This meant that on Sunday evening almost all the restaurants in St George were closed. Even Jimmy Johns and Subway were closed.  With no food at our Air b’n’b we were forced to seek solace not with the church but with St Georges only restaurant open on a Sunday. We gave up on the 1 hour 45 wait for a table and ordered take out from the restaurant instead, and this still took an hour !

We spent out last night in Utah on our whirlwind road trip around the states eating burgers and watching James Bond.  But you know what, there was no other place I wouldn't have been at that moment.    

Vegas took my passport

She shoots, she scores … oh wait no she doesn’t score.  She loses badly. And when I mean lose I mean she gets robbed. Despite what my Dad may think my passport almost certainly got STOLEN  in Vegas and I was left in Nevada with no passport, no ID and with the very real prospect I might not be leaving USA in a week. 

How’s that for a dramatic beginning for a blog post.

I remember I once wrote on this blog about how proud I was for not losing anything whilst being in the USA.  Well the ceasefire between my objects and myself ended in spectacular fashion when not one, but both of my passports, my drivers license and some cash got stolen from my bag in Las Vegas. 

To be frank I was certainly not acting like the safest traveler – carrying my wallet in my backpack which only fastened magnetically, putting all forms of ID in the same bag and then having the sense to walk around Vegas with the bag strung loosely on my back. 

We’re still not entirely sure what happened but I had the wallet when we entered the hotel lobby and it was gone by the time we had reached the top of the elevator. Hotel security was quite hopeless – they got very uptight when we asked them to review the CTV footage and were very reluctant to do anything about it. 

What that meant was that I had to first call the New Zealand embassy in Washington D.C and then the New Zealand consulate in Santa Monica to organize an emergency travel document so that I could travel back to New Zealand the following week.

These bad boys don’t come to cheap though – $500 NZ for an emergency document if you pick up the document from Santa Monica, Los Angeles.

So apart from losing my passports what did I think of Vegas!?

Not much. Personally, I didn’t like the atmosphere that permeated the strip – alcohol, sex and gambling.  Images of bikini clad women who ‘wanted to meet you’ lined posters, buses and trucks. Even the waitresses at the pool in the hotel were required to wear bikini’s whilst they worked.  Along with this people drank yard glasses filled with margaritas on the street and smoked in the hotel. 

It’s also important to talk about safety in Vegas.  Yes, I might be slightly biased since my passport got LOST STOLEN but truthfully out of all the places I’ve been in the USA it was where I felt the least safe.  Walking around off the Strip at night felt dangerous – if anything were to happen there was literally no one around to help.  It is also quite telling of a place when Uber drivers ensure they drop you off right outside a restaurant and tell you to be safe every time to exit.

If you were to spend all your time in the hotel, pool and bar you would feel relatively comfortable but actually getting out and seeing the sights (particularly those not on the Strip) felt unsafe for two young girls.

All in all I don’t think I’ll be running back to Las Vegas. 

This may have been somewhat of a more negative post but hopefully my last couple of days in the USA will be much better!