Bye Bye Zion

The Attentive Student getting help from DAD.

 

A great little campsite right on the Virgin River, only 8 miles from Zion Park.  The price is right.  It is free!!  I do not know who looks after it, but the place was spotless! Also, it had firepits and lots of room for privacy!!  It is definitely in our plans if the Zion park spot is ever full.

At the Casino we stayed in Mesquite, this was the grand total of my winnings!!

Oct 18 to 21

After 8 days in Zion, the weather started to turn cloudy and rain/storm clouds were on the horizon, so we decided to head a little bit south to Mesquite to ride out the storm.  In Mesquite we changed pace and booked into a casino-hotel for 4 nights.

Mesquite is an interesting town.  It is located on the Virgin river at an elevation of less than 2,000 ft.  This is over a 2,400 ft drop from Zion, so it is considerably warmer in the winter.  When we arrived, it was a very comfortable 85 degrees.  The town is relatively new and located on the Nevada side of the of the north corner of the Nevada/Arizona border (wow, try to figure that one out!!).  Besides the 4 casinos, it has a number of beautiful golf courses, 2 of which are designed by Arnold Palmer.  The courses ramble through miles of newly developed retirement homes, most of which are either on the course or a house or two from the course.  The courses are extremely high end, but reasonably priced compared to those in Kelowna.  An instant membership is $5,000, and the monthly fees are $350.  For that not only do you get the golfing, but a club house that is out of this world, with tennis, pools, volleyball, horseshoes, dining and dancing and a first class restaurant (all year round!).  With the price of a new home in the $150,000 to $170,000 range, many Canadians are buying in these subdivisions.  Since the courses each meander over 7,000 yards through the back desert area of Mesquite, that makes 9 miles of homes located right on the course.  None of the holes are side-by-side, so it is hard to believe that these enormous courses actually start and end at the same club-house.

Another amazing thing is the incredible contrast between the beautifully manicures green fairways and the adjacent red desert land where the houses are designed in shades of light red/orange to blend into the desert surroundings.

While we were in town, they were getting ready for the big event of the year in town.  Mesquite is the home of the Golf World Long-ball Championship.  It attracts 1,000’s of people to the town and is their chance to shine on the world stage as this is televised on TSN and gets major coverage in the golf world.

Adrienne and I quite like the town where palm trees are as common as evergreens at home.  The casinos are very friendly.  Our room had 2 queen size beds and was very nice (in fact it had a note on the door that said it could be rented for as much as $400!), and we paid only $25 per night and that included breakfast.  The restaurant\ food in the casinos was about ½ the price of what we pay at home, and the quality was very good and portions about 50% more than we get at home!  No wonder so many young families were eating at the casino restaurants.   Also there was good free live entertainment 6 nights a week.  Also, like Los Vegas, they never close!

We were very fortunate with the weather in Mesquite.  For the first 3 days, the storms were in the hills around us, and we had great sunshine, so the pool/hot-tub was very attractive. About ¾ through the third day, that clouds and wind hit us.  The clouds were laced with lightening strikes, but we missed the main brunt of the storm.  This storm was quite impressive in some locations where it dropped 2 inches of rain in an area that gets only 5 inches a year!  Los Vegas had extreme flooding in the streets and the weather channel was constantly beeping alerts to warn certain cities in the area.

We woke up Thursday morning, somewhat earlier than usual, headed to the casino for our morning breakfast, and then after loading the bikes we were on our way.

After spending an hour showing Ade what I had discovered in the real estate market—such as 2 bedroom houses on the Arnold Palmer golf course for $150,000!—we were on our way to Huntington Beach.

If you do not have to spend the summer there, Mesquite is a pretty nice spot.