Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Vegas to Utah

Friday morning we were going to get up nice and early (surprise!) and meet my friend Sarah and her husband John for breakfast. They were actually at the same hotel and had got in on Thursday also but were pretty much passed out by the time we got there. They live in Texas so they are two hours ahead of us and actually ended up going to breakfast at 7. Since we didn't even go to bed until 3 we got up at 8 and went to breakfast on our own.

The first restaurant we came to when we went downstairs was Hash Hash To Go Go (what weird name) so we put in our name and then went and played slots for a few minutes while we waited for our buzzer thing to go off. After a few minutes we were up a few bucks and our table was ready (score!).

I ended up getting the basic breakfast and Scott got a pancake bigger than his head. Their biscuits were home made and they had home made strawberry jam. It was yummy!


Right after breakfast we finally met up with Sarah and John, ran up to our room, got our stuff and checked out.

Sarah and John had rented a car and we all jumped in and then were on our way to Utah!

 Utah? Why Utah? To go to the Zion Half Marathon of course! I'd never been to Utah before so this was all kinds of fun and exciting.

Our drive was to take about 2 1/2 hours and most of the scenery looked pretty boring. Just the desert.
Eventually it started getting rockier and prettier. 
'

 Before I knew it we were there! That's the fun part of travelling with great friends! Time goes by so fast and you totally enjoy yourself.

The road that took us up to the Expo and hotel was also the road that we were going to be running our half marathon on. That was good and a little bad to see what we were up against. Long slow climbing hills.

We got up to the place that the race was going to start and where they were holding the "expo". We stopped under the FINISH line to snap some pics.



We got our packet stuff and walked around the expo. Scott thought I should get this headband (but I didn't). The only thing I bought was some GU because I didn't have time to get some before we left on our trip. Oh and a sticker for my car. 


We walked through the gift shops and Sarah found this. We probably should have bought it haha.


Some selfies in front of the mountains



and some walking around the visitor's center. SO beautiful!


We were all kind of hungry but we were supposed to meet John's cousins and uncle for dinner later so we went into the Brew Pub (which seems to actually be named the Zion Canyon Brewing Company). We were told that outside was full but they'd seat us inside (ok we didn't care, just wanted some food). We got some water and eventually ordered and then waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually we just got up and left because the waiter didn't seem to remember we were there.

Instead we went and checked into our hotel and Scott and I had a bag of popcorn and a stale granola bar from the mostly empty vending machine. At least we weren't hungry right?

We were staying at the Zion Park Inn which was a little spendy for me but we wanted to stay in the same hotel as our friends. The hotel was really nice and had great views. We were on the first floor and this was our view out the window.

Beautiful! 

At 5:30 we went to meet up with John's cousins at a restaurant called Wildcat Willies. It was us two couples, two cousin's, a friend of a cousin, his uncle and his uncle's girlfriend. 

This uncle and his girlfriend made all our meals that we ate together over the days quite interesting. The uncle is in his early 80's and his wife died about two years ago and this "new girlfriend" came along real quick after. The daughters were NOT HAPPY and don't like this girlfriend who is a bit eccentric. It's of course obvious to the girlfriend that the girls don't like her. That made for some very interesting situations! Lots of snarky comments flying around. Drama, drama, drama!

So we all sat around one big table and this is when we all met and so dinner was full of some getting to know you conversations along with family talk with the cousins and uncle.

Meanwhile Scott was enjoying a rack of ribs and I had a bacon cheeseburger with blue cheese on it (and sweet potato fries). That was interesting. It was good but a lot. I ended up taking half back to the hotel for later.


After dinner we walked down the street and found a little grocery store and bought a few things to take back to the room. Since we had a fridge we picked up some coffee creamer, some bananas and stuff for breakfast before the race and just some snacks for later. I'm so glad we did that since we ended up eating almost all of the food over the next couple days.

That's definitely something to think about when you are doing a "vacation race".

It doesn't really matter how many races you  have done, the night before is always filled with a bit of excitement. I set out all my stuff (but last minute in the morning switched to shorts) before I went to bed.

And then crashed out at about eight and slept like a baby.

Until about 2:30 am when I was WIDE AWAKE. HA!



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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Julie,
The last week or so I spend reading your blog posts from the last year up until now. I must say that you really motivate me to continue running! I cannot wait for your recap of the Zion Half, as I want to know if it was any fun. I´ve been there about 7 years ago so it would be fun to do a race there some time. I looks just as beautiful as I remember :)
Thanks for your fun blogposts!

Annsterw said...

I love laying out my stuff the night before too! Love the wings on your shoes!!!! Sooo stinking cute!

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