After having travelled through Arizona for days, we crossed the border to Utah. Here's the route we took:
Kanab
We had read about the town of Kanab that many Western movies were filmed there, so we were planning on driving through to take a quick look. But when we got there, I liked this little place so much that I convinced Matt to stay the night. We stayed at the Crazy Horse campground, which we liked a lot, and spent some time walking through Kanab. The buildings are kept in a Western type style, which is fun, and there's little bits of information about Hollywood actors who filmed there all across the main street.
Bryce Canyon
I have to mention Utah's Scenic Byway 12 that leads to Bryce Canyon first, because the route is just so pretty. You can stop on the side of the road to take pictures, too!
The Canyon itself is absolutely beautiful. It's nothing like the Grand Canyon - the colours are completely different (orangey red and white), and the rocks carved by water and ice look like giant stalagmites. Just as with the Grand Canyon, you pay 30$ for the entry and can then drive around in your car, the shuttle bus, or go hiking. The hiking trails we saw looked amazing - you get to go through the canyon in between all those stalagmite rocks. We didn't have time to do much hiking, but we started a couple of trails and they were all great. An advantage compared to the Grand Canyon is that the whole area around Bryce Canyon is much more natural: it looks less like a sidewalk and more like an actual hiking trail.
UT-14
Going to Cedar City was just a random idea that I had - I thought it would be a great way to see more of Utah before going back to Las Vegas and return our rental car. We left Bryce Canyon, set our GPS to our destination and didn't do much research at all - which we really should have done. Things started to get weird when we saw multiple warning signs at the entry of route 14. But we thought, yeah, sure, snow in the middle of May, that's not going to happen.
Little did we know! We started seeing the first snow leftovers after about 10 minutes, on the side of the road, under the trees (the route leads through the Dixie National Forest).
About 20 minutes in, it started snowing. The U-14 leads over the mountains, so we were just climbing higher and higher. We passed the Navajo lake that looked stunning in the snow (we were SO cold while taking pictures though). We even saw deer on multiple occasions! At one point, you get a view on the other mountains around and we realised just how high we were... it was just like the Military Road in Ireland all over again!
Cedar City
Thankfully, we did get back to the ground at one point and drove through the mountains to Cedar City.
The town is famous for the Utah Shakespeare Festival that lasts from June to October and the Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is only accessible from June to mid-November because of all the snow. The Zion Kolob is also very close, and it's a little version of the Zion National Park, only without the river and less crowded. I guess it's an interesting spot in the summer, but we basically just slept there and went on to St. George.
St. George
We first only stopped in St. George because I wanted to go to Target. I needed to replace some toiletries that got broken or spilled during our RV trip (I didn't store them right, it was totally my own fault) and supposed that I would find everything there. After having spent an embarassing amount of time in the store (I would have taken half the home section with me if I could!), we kind of just went on with shopping. St. George has quite a lot of stores: I managed to find fairly cheap Vans sneakers in an outlet store, almost bought colour changing shirts for my little brothers (but didn't, because 9-year-olds tend to spill on white clothes), and visited the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, which is an interesting American shop and a restaurant at the same time. I really wanted to find a Utah sweatshirt, but didn't, unfortunately. I'm not exactly sure why, but I really liked this town a lot! Maybe because I'm a shopping addict?
...and here's a picture from the road back to Las Vegas:
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