We're in Utah! Sand Hollow State Park

 The purpose of our trip was to experience the National Parks in southern Utah, and here we are in southern Utah!  We crossed over from Nevada to Arizona about noon on Friday (March 3rd).

This looks better than many RV Park set-ups!

 Beautiful canyons and mesas... We were only in Arizona for about 36 miles, but it was really pretty scenery. We stopped at a church in Littlefield, AZ to let the cats out for a walk, and they spent a good hour chasing lizards and enjoying the sunshine.  I put shorts on for the first time this trip!!

The first trees we've seen leafing out.

Heading into Virgin River Gorge; "gorge-ous!"

We pulled into St. George, UT mid afternoon and picked up State Park info at the Visitors' Centre.  We decided to head out to Sand Hollow State Park to see if they had availability for tonight (reservations are minimum 2 days ahead of time... ooops).  The State Park is about 10 miles outside of St. George. We got there a little after 4 pm, which we now know was a little after 5 pm as we missed the time zone change sign... so, we took one of the spots they had available - a non-serviced site on the sand beach.  OUR FIRST DRY CAMPING OF THE SEASON: March 3rd!!  Wow...

Orange beaches!!

The cats were THRILLED to have sand under their feet.  It was like a gigantic catbox! Tawny got absolutely zoomy... she ran hither and yon, in full cheetah form, lengthening her stride and tearing from one side of the campsite to the other, usually ending up under the trailer or on the stairs.  Sammy, on the other hand, being the fastidious one, set about to cover up all poops left by predecessors (who didn't pick up!) in our spot... poor little guy... he was busy for an hour!

Tawny, guarding the trailer

The sun sunk in the sky, and the dirt bikes, dune buggies and ATVs all came home to roost.  Holy Zoo!!!  The cats were in the trailer and under the bed in a big hurry, and we were trying to figure out how to read the State Park brochure we picked up at the Visitor Centre... we found a column later that said: "OHVs allowed" (which is Off-Highway Vehicles which is the same thing as Dune Buggies and Dirt Bikes!).  John said the lady in the State Park office was more concerned with whether or not we wanted power and water than whether or not we were parked next to 1,378 "OHVs".  Who knew??  We were very thankful that there was only one night available in the park and we weren't able to stay longer... phew.

The OHVs were out in force again before the sun came up on Saturday!!  So, obviously, we were up early as well, and tried out our dry camping coffee maker for the first time this trip! We tried to get the cats out, but the dirt bikes were coming very close to our spot, and there was a road race (running) going on around the reservoir, so lots of joggers/runners and pace cars, and it was not happy for the cats...

The reservoir around Quail's Creek State Park

We drove into St.George in the truck, looking for the State run liquor store, stocked up on white wine (it's sunny here!) and checked out both the KOA and the Quail's Creek state park camping areas.  We decided to stay a night in the KOA campground so I could catch up on my blog (they have wifi and state parks do NOT), then we will move over to the State park for a couple of days and tour Zion National Park and surrounding area, and so we moved the cats over to the KOA campground.  They seemed pretty happy to be in a place that didn't have ATVs, but they are tired from a couple of nights in a row of loud parks and so are pretty low key tonight. We had them out for 1/2 hr then they came in and CRASHED while we made dinner and hauled out the computer to do the blog.

Such lovely views of mountains around here.

 It was only one night of no power last night, but we already were happy for power connection tonight. We made a lovely dinner of Moraccan mahi mahi over butternut squash spiralized noodles with avocado tomato and fresh basil salad and steamed beets.  Ahhhh... camping... :)

Tomorrow, it's back to dry camping and no internet/cell for the next 3 days...