Las Vegas to Zion National Park – 2023

May 08, 2023

It was a rough start in the morning. One of my pet peeves is when you are on a group tour and someone is late. I was that person this morning but in my defense, the documentation said the location was “To Be Determined”, I called the Rocky Mountaineer customer service number and asked and asked them and they said the hotel lobby. The Nomad hotel is a hotel within a hotel, the meeting point was in the park MGM lobby, I was waiting in the Nomad Hotel Lobby. We got it all straightened out but I felt like we were the ones who held up the group and as the last people on, we sat in the very back of the four row van.

There was a total of 8 people on the tour bus besides the tour guide. Las Vegas Blvd was under construction, as it always seems to be when I visit Las Vegas and it seemed like forever to go just a few blocks. At one point the guy sitting in the front made a political joke. I found myself wondering, why in a brand new group of people would he do that, it doesn’t matter if you are right or left, in a group of 8 people you are bound to offend someone. Yet I see the same types of political slamming on Social Media.

The tour guide didn’t miss a beat and said, “I once heard someone say, if you want to talk about religion, then go to a church, it is a place to talk about religion, if you want to talk politics, the you can go to hell.” Everyone laughed and I thought it was a great way of shutting him down but I wondered, why in a group setting would you start out making political comments.

We stopped just outside of the park for lunch at a place called Anthera. As I ate lunch, I realized that although I had flown through Salt Lake City dozens of times, this was the first time that I was actually seeing Utah!

Zion National Park was amazing! I said the same thing that I said in Yosemite, everywhere you look, the view is amazing and as the light changes, you see different things and the pictures aren’t going to do it justice!

As we left the park, we stopped at a restaurant called the Thunderbird – where they serviced Ho-Made Pies!