Vacation in Southern Utah

Barren is beautiful in Bryce National Park

Some of my favorite vacations took place in the southwestern United States. Each year, in the fall, Barry and I traveled to Las Vegas for a truck show on behalf of Hercules Bumpers, our Council family business. The company manufactured heavy duty bumpers for pickup trucks. Barry and I flew out early from south Georgia because he was in charge of setting up the booth. For several days, he and Hal, my brother, worked at the convention promoting the newest bumpers and finding new customers among the truck dealerships represented there. We were a national company at that time and our strong, tough bumpers were in demand all over the country.

Neither Barry nor I were into gambling, but we enjoyed the stage shows with popular performers like Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton.

Our favorite part of the trip was after the convention center closed and all the Hercules bumpers were repacked and shipped home, we had a week to ourselves.

We rented a car and drove north into southern Utah. I had not realized how beautiful the barren landscape would be. The hoodoos, like spires from another planet in Bryce Canyon, stood magnificently tall, the color of burnished copper in the setting sun.

We drove to Zion National Park and Barry took hundreds of photographs. I had never seen landscapes like those at Zion. You can’t drive through much of the park, and at that time we didn’t know of any way to get down into the gorge. I understand now you can take a shuttle down between the high canyon walls that rise a thousand feet and see the narrow river that created this site. 

My favorite memory of those trips was a ride back to Las Vegas in the falling snow.  We drove through large forests of Aspen trees with their white trunks. We listened to a recording of haunting Indian flute melodies while driving through the total silence of the snowfall. Click on the link below and imagine driving for an hour through softly falling snow covering the Aspen trees. The deep forests of white trunks bordered the mountain road.        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyTy0WHOYqw&list=PLKeaaUnDcEk7Mn8f6ofiUyplqhiWwx587&index=2

I still get chills remembering the feeling I had that day. We both knew we had seen and been a part of something very special and I will never forget it. That video is packed in a box and I will find it and show it one day, I hope.

Southern Utah has an interesting history. The Mormons are a major part of it. Books about those who left Salt Lake City and moved south tell those stories. Many of them had come west from the southern part of the mainland so the region came to be called Dixie. 

I love the western part of our country and southern Utah holds great memories for me.