Snow Canyon S.P. - St. George, UT - Mar 2009

The Watchman Campground at Zion was shut down on March 30 & 31 while the park's staff and volunteers prepared for the upcoming busy season. We decided it was a good time to head to our next destination, so we left on Monday and proceeded to head over to Snow Canyon State Park - a mere 55 miles away near St. George, Utah.

This is the first time I have written about a place where we DIDN'T stay. Usually, we can find something good about almost every place we stay, but Snow Canyon just didn't work for us. While the park itself was beautiful -- a gorgeous, red rock canyon with excellent hiking trails -- the campground was pathetic. I wish now that I had taken a photo to show you, but I didn't, so I'll have to describe it the best I can.

Our first glimpse of the campsites left us cold -- a dozen paved spots, all in a row, that were right on top of each other and flanked on one side by a run-down restroom building and the dump station and on the other side by the ranger's office. Every two sites shared a utility post and the RVs were separated -- I swear -- by inches!

I was tempted to leave right then and there, but since the rest of the park was so pretty, we decided to suck it up and stay at the pathetic campground just so we could enjoy a couple of nice hikes.

I went to pay for a site while Frank unhitched the car. There were only two empty spots to choose from, so I walked over and looked at them. Both sites were barely 8 feet across with the neighbors windows on one side and a covered picnic table on the other. The driveways were so narrow that the RVs had to park just inches away from the utility post -- so close that it was nearly impossible to squeeze your body between your rig and the neighbors to get to the electrical hookup.

I thought "oh well, we're here -- might as well make the best of it." I picked the lesser of two evil sites and paid the fee. On my way back to the site, I passed by the dump station (a mere 20' away from our new spot) and I smelled that nasty stench of an open sewer and I thought "Phew, we'll have to keep our windows closed."

Back at the site -- I helped direct Frank while he squeezed the RV into the very narrow slot of a site and it was dicey whether he would make it in without taking out the utility post on the right or the picnic table cover on the left -- it was that tight. Honestly, I don't know how a bigger RV could have gotten in -- and once in, there was no way that anyone with a slide-out could have extended it.

Once the rig was in place, I was appalled to find that the RV was sloping so far down on one side that it would be nearly impossible to raise it up to level -- even with all five sets of our leveling blocks. So, I had Frank move the RV forward and back (with only inches to maneuver on either side -- what a pain) hoping to find a more level spot, but to no avail. After 15 minutes of maneuvering, I gave up and decided that we would just have to dig out all the blocks and do the best we could.

While I was hauling out the blocks, Frank was looking around for an open spot for the tv satellite dish and there was none. There was not one spare inch of dirt between the sites -- so that meant we wouldn't be able to set up our satellite tv. That's not a big deal since we can always use our over-the-air antenna. Then he checked his cell phone and discovered we had no cell phone service (and that also means no internet), so about now we were thinking this place sucks.

The last straw came when I went to go in the RV to try using our cell phone antenna and I couldn't get the RV door open because the damn picnic table cover was in the way. Turns out I had left three inches too much room on the other side of the RV (in an effort to give Frank room to hook up the electric cord) and took away critical "door swing" room on the patio side. That was it -- I said "screw this" and went and got my money back and we left.

Ok, so now the good news -- we had a back-up park in mind so off we went. It was about 30 miles away and back towards Hurricane -- it's called Sand Hollow State Park. I didn't know anything about the park, but just had it in mind should Snow Canyon not work out. Well, we arrived and were pleased to find a brand new park with big, roomy sites that were located on top of a hill with outstanding views in all directions. More on that park in another post.