Greetings from PANGUITCH, a city in Utah that we can’t pronounce (we’re too embarrassed to ask a townie for proper pronunciation). It’s our stopover between Zion and Arches National Parks. Panguitch is a row of motels and coffee shops right off the highway. Late tonight, we landed at the Flying M restaurant for a piece of apple pie, and as a bonus, got a waitress with all the town gossip. Said waitress tipped us off to the bait and switch pricing scandal at a nearby hotel, and it was on her recommendation that we turned the CR-V in to a Doc Brown-modified DeLorean, and went back to 1952…
Or at least, that’s how it seems in large parts of Panguitch, a city where the thin line between “gimmicky retro” and “not upgraded in five decades” is oft-blurred. So here we are in 1952 at the Lamp Lighter Inn, which is definitely on the “original” side of the scale… in a good way.
Things that happened today that were good: Breakfast with Doctor Kathy Campbell, and her lovely husband, Doctor Steve Ponder, at the Food Network-featured “Coffee Cup” Diner in Boulder City, NV. The drive through spectacular Nevada, Arizona, and Utah countryside. XM Satellite radio. Emily taking her first turn behind the wheel. Zion National Park. Getting a great WPA-designed poster of Zion which is going to look fantastic in our house. Hiking the Riverside Trail at Zion, stopping only when we had to start wading through the water The pie and tater-tots at the Flying M. Not getting sunburned.
The not so good: Emily pulling on to the freeway after a gas stop with the emergency brake still activated. (Whoops.) No Internet access at Lamp Lighter. (What, they didn’t have the ‘net in 1952?) Car struck by a flying bird/giant bat at sundown. Our GPS device (“Isis,” we call her, after the Egyptian goddess of navigation) trying to find a Starbucks located inside a casino, and sending us on a fourteen mile Interstate detour. (What, they didn’t have Starbucks in ancient Egypt?) Completely forgetting about the Mountain Time Zone, and discovering on our return to the Zion visitors center that it wasn’t 5:45, it was really 6:45, and an extra hour had been snipped out of our day.
The great: Ending the day, safe and secure, looking at 100+ photos of day two, writing this blog, an air conditioned room. And heading for Arches National Park, possibly via a very scenic highway, in the morning. After we check out one of the other cool diners in town…
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