SATURDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2025

(Las Vegas, NV – Springdale, UT)

I woke up. 1.30am. Back to sleep. 4.30am. Not getting back to sleep. I did try. And then I just lay there and thought about plans. And then I read for an hour or so. And then I got my phone and did some more trip planning. And finally, at 7.50am I got up got dressed. At which point I woke Andrew up. Looking at me getting dressed he asked if I was going to the gym… er, no. Very definitely, no. I was in fact headed to the lobby to get us both coffee. When I came back to the room the curtains were open revealing a great view of mountains, with airplanes periodically crossing the field of view as they came in to land at the airport.

After coffee, we had breakfast, showered and checked out. Not much packing, as there hadn’t been much unpacking, with everything we needed carefully packed into one case. Since picking up the car we had driven a total of 1.7 miles, and we proceeded to do another 0.9 miles to get to the Columbia store just after it opened at 10am. Sometime later, we emerged with the odd item, or two…

We drove north up I-15, and after twenty minutes were out of the metropolis of Vegas, and headed across the desert.

The road enters Arizona, where it winds through the Virgin River gorge, before entering Utah. 

We took Highway 9 towards Hurricane, where we stopped at Walmart. First task was to get lunch, which we did at a Subway concession inside the store, as I’d been hungry for the last hour and it was now 3pm. The clocks went forward when we entered Utah, but they go back again tonight. So, the time yesterday would have been 9pm, 20 miles away it is 2pm, now it is 3pm and tomorrow it will be 2pm. Got that? Suitably fuelled we find everything we needed without much trouble, including a range of nutritional (!) items.

Our route towards Springdale took us around the far side of Hurricane which isn’t the normal road we take, but gave us a good look at all of the new housing developments that are being built. The city (which I used to regard as a town, but is now bigger than that) is expanding rapidly. From there, the scenery got bigger, and redder, and rockier, until we arrived at our hotel.

We checked in and got settled in our room, which has a brilliantly large walk in closet, big enough to stash all of the luggage, which is lovely. It means the room feels more relaxing.

After a brief respite, we walked a couple of doors down to the Zion Pizza & Noodle restaurant, our usual destination for dinner. Things have changed a bit though, as it’s now table service.

After that it was back to the room for rest and blogging, and to prepare for hiking tomorrow.