It's downhill all the way...

For those who are looking for a place to visit - I can highly recommend St George - although sometimes it almost seemed too perfect (Stepford Wives comes to mind...).  The streets are wide, nobody litters, every night there seems to be a baseball game or tournament going on, there are various cultural events going on all the time (in fact - we had too much choice and couldn't see everything we wanted to see) and just generally - a lovely small city.  Our RV park overlooked the Temple and the mountains in the background - and we couldn't ask for nicer surroundings.

We got to St George Thursday afternoon and immediately decided to take the bikes and go in search of the heart of St George.  After much discussion with a couple of local residents - we decided to just go straight up Main Street to St George Blvd - and the heart of the shopping district.  I should mention that before we left Jim and Maur's - they kindly volunteered a couple of bikes that they had stored in their barn and hadn't used in the last 5+ years.  One of the bikes must have been Sam's as a youngster of 10 or 11 - and is the smallest/weirdest bike I have ever seen.  I would volunteer to ride it - but the seat and handle bars are too close together and my knees constantly hit the handle bars as I pedal - so I for sure can't ride it.  It is actually both too small and too tall for Karen as well (although I can't explain why she had bike dirt on her belly instead of her knees???).  The seat will only go down so far - and then hits the frame - so in order for her to start pedalling - she has to kind of hop along - until she can bounce up onto the seat and start furiously pedalling - it is actually quite difficult to describe her technique - perhaps one day I will video it - and post it to this blog, but until I do - take my word for it - she is someone you want to give a wide berth to until she is going - and then don't stop her unless it is an EMERGENCY!!!

So back to my story of the bike trip.  As I am pedalling along - I come to realise that I am out of shape - badly out of shape - and keep stopping, complaining to Karen that I have to go back, but then deciding that I will go another block or two before I turn around.  Finally, after doing this 3 or 4 times - Karen says that at least we won't have this problem on the way back - since it will be downhill.  It is at this moment that I look behind me and realise that part of my problem (not all of it by a long shot - since I am still really out of shape) was that we were going uphill and I was too stupid to realise it.  Knowing now that I will not have a horrible time on the way home - I tell Karen to just keep going and I will eventually catch up - and I keep talking myself into going a bit further and a bit further until we make the center of town -  Here we find a local cake/coffee shop and stop for some lemonade and homemade cupcakes...(which by the way were excellent).  I am glad that I didn't give up too early -

After a nice rest - with sunset quickly settling in and me realising that I only have my sun glasses - we decide to head back to the campsite - and I begin the ride home.  I knew that it would be easier - going downhill - but hadn't realised that I would barely touch the pedals - just simply glide home - and what had taken me 45 minutes to do going up - would take 5 minutes (and some close calls with cars on the streets) on the way back.  Too bad Karen didn't have it quite as nice as she lost her left brake on the way home and had to dampen her speed constantly or risk going through a red light, etc.  I will definitely have to check that bike out before she takes it out again - and I think until we are out of the mountains - we will leave the bikes tied to the rack at the back of the motor home...no use chancing fate.

On Friday - we ended up spending the day confined to barracks as Karen found she over did it with the biking and needed to recover from our exploring St George.  After our bike trip - we decided that we definitely needed a car in order to see all we wanted to see - so off I go to the St George airport to rent a car.  Now here is another amazing thing.  We had googled the airport - found that it was only a mile or so from our RV site, and thought - take a cab to pick up the car.  At least it won't be the $30 taxi fare like it was in Las Vegas...little did we know that they had just opened a brand new airport outside of town last month.  So new in fact that even Google didn't know about it.  Now - I don't have a $30 cab fare - it is $40 as they put the new airport 10 miles out - in anticipation of growth I guess.  I have never encountered such a remote airport in my life.  But I got there - got myself a fluorescent lime green  Mazda - one that I can find in a parking lot and away we went. 

Sat. we explored Zion National Park and the surrounding area.  I will close this blog for now - leaving you in suspense regarding all that we discovered/encountered for another time.  Hopefully - I will get around to writing this next segment soon as the scenery was breathtaking, we encountered some interesting people and generally it was a great day.  I have included a picture of the park as a taster of what to expect - but it is getting to be past midnight and I must lay my weary head down so that I don't waste tomorrow...