Snow Canyon State Park, Utah - September 20th to 23rd, 2024

We love exploring different state parks. Some state parks are nicer than others. Snow Canyon State Park turned out to be a wonderful one. The beautiful scenery of southern Utah is hard to beat.

Friday was an average travel day, about three and a half hours from Great Basin National Park in Nevada to Snow Canyon State Park in Utah. But we lost an hour due to the change in time zones. The drive started out similar to the drive across Nevada, alternating between wide desert valleys and mountain passes. As we approached the town of Beaver, the scenery started to look more like southern Utah, with beautiful, colorful rock formations.

At Beaver, we got on Interstate 15. We hadn’t been on an interstate in months. At least there was nice scenery to look at to make the heavy traffic more tolerable.

We stopped in Cedar City for lunch, gas, laundry, and groceries. Our lunch was at Costa Vida. We normally don’t stop at chains while we travel, especially ones we that we have near our house. But sometimes it’s nice to go somewhere familiar. Costa Vida is a fast food chain of Mexican food that was started in Utah, so it seemed appropriate. We’ve been to Costa Vida many times. There was one near Ann’s work which she would visit about once a week, but then it shut down. Then there was one within walking distance of our house, which we would walk to, but then that one shut down as well. Now there is one about five miles away that we go to on occasion. It had been a while since we’d visited a Costa Vida, but we remembered our usual orders with no problems. Ann’s favorite is the salad with grilled chicken, black beans, mango salsa, and guacamole with tomatillo ranch dressing served in a flour tortilla. Keith always has the sweet pork enchiladas. They tasted just like we remembered.

Then we headed over to the Main Street Washateria. It was the nicest laundromat we’ve ever been to. An attendant greets you as you walk in the door, making sure you have everything you need. The machines take coins, or you can charge all of your loads with one swipe of a credit card at the attendant’s station, where he can control all of the machines. The place is clean, with large machines. We were washing our sheets this time along with our normal loads of clothes. At other places, this would mean three to four loads. Here, it was comfortably two loads.

There is plenty of comfortable seating to use while you wait. You can lounge on comfortable sofas or on a comfortable chair at a desk, if you want to work on a laptop. There were plenty of clean tables to fold your clean clothes on. Of course, this all came at a price. It cost us $18.55 to wash our two loads and $5.15 to dry them. If we would have used coins, it would have saved us 70 cents. We gladly paid that price for such a nice experience. We’ve paid more for less before.

Another pleasant surprise was Snow Canyon State Park. We had never been there before and didn’t know what to expect. The place is gorgeous, with red and white rock formations with black lava rocks strewn around the valley floor. All of the sites in the small campground had wonderful views of the beautiful surroundings. However, that also meant that they are exposed. There are some full hookup sites, in case you are there in the summer and need air conditioning. But those pull-through sites are rather close together. The other sites are nicer with more privacy for lounging at your site.

Before we set up camp, we dumped and filled our tanks. We didn’t do that at Great Basin National Park in the morning because they charged $10 to dump, so we took our chances to see if Snow Canyon charged to dump. Thankfully, dumping at Snow Canyon was free, so it was a good call.

When we stopped in Cedar City, our automatic stairs stopped working again. Bummer! Then, after we set up, we noticed that our fresh tank sensor now had a “no-communications” error (our gray water sensor hadn’t been working for months). Oh well, we’ll know when we’re out of fresh water when it stops flowing through the faucets. We’ve been traveling long enough in the EKKO to know about how long the fresh tank will last us. The hard part will be filling up. If you fill it too full, it starts coming out the overflow, creating a vacuum and dumping several gallons of water on the ground before it stops. As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, “It just goes to show ya. It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

After we set up, Keith added Gaffers tape to the top of our new foot stool for more friction. Even with the foot stool, it is still a big step down out of the rig. The last thing we need is slipping off the foot stool and getting hurt.

Saturday we relaxed in the morning and took a hike in the afternoon. The route we took is called Snow Canyon in AllTrails. It is a large loop involving several different trails, hitting most of the highlights in the state park. The track starts in the parking lot, just south of the campground, but we started from our camp site. There was a trail cutting over to the route from the campground, which was actually a neat little trail over and through some rock formations.

The route follows the Red Sands Trail to the Petrified Dunes Trail. After climbing over the petrified dunes, it turns onto the Butterfly Trail. The Butterfly Trail dead-ends into the Lava Flow Trail.

There are two lava tubes that you can enter. We went one direction on the Lava Flow Trail to reach the first lava tube. It was a steep and very deep drop into the lava tube. We had our headlamps with us, but climbing down into that first lava tube looked like it was beyond our skill level, so we didn’t try.

Taking the Lava Flow Trail back in the other direction, we reached the second lava tube. This was still a steep climb down, but looked much more manageable and within our capabilities. So we put on our headlamps, sent our GPS location to our kids and went down. Another person there, who didn’t have a headlamp, went down with us, taking advantage of our light. We’re glad he got to experience the lava tube with us.

The lava tube actually didn’t go very far before it dead-ended. The scent of bat guano was in the air, but we didn’t see any bats. After climbing back out, we made sure we disinfected our hands with sanitizer.

The route continued along the Lava Flow Trail to the West Canyon Road. West Canyon Road is a gravel road, but we weren’t on it long before turning onto Red Sands, leading us back to close the loop. The views of the surrounding colorful rocky canyon along the whole route were fantastic.

By the time we returned to camp, we had gone 4.5 miles with an elevation gain of 574 feet in just under three hours. It was our 65th hike for the year.

Back at camp, Keith decided to work on a solution for the non-working fresh water tank sensor. Getting inspiration from a post on the Winnebago EKKO Facebook group, he rigged up a temporary fix. He removed the air vent grate under the driver side bed, above the second step, so you can see the fresh water tank behind it. Then he took the step light and taped it to the bottom of the fresh tank, so the light would illuminate the tank making it easier see the water level. This involved cutting the wires to the light so he could move the light into the fresh tank cavity, through the air vent next to where the light was originally mounted. Now, when we turn on the step light, we can see the level of the water in the fresh water tank. Of course, as soon as he rigged this all up, the fresh water tank sensor decided to start working again.

Sunday, we went on another hike right from the campground. Again, we waited until after lunch before starting our hike. That meant that we were hiking in the heat of the day, with a lower chance of encountering wildlife. It would have been better to hike in the morning. But we were getting tired of getting up early and eating lunch out on the trail. The further along we are in our travel season, the more we want to relax. Even if that means hiking in the less-than-ideal time of day.

The trail this time was the Red Sands Trail. The first part of our hike was the same as the day before, but, instead of turning onto the Petrified Dunes Trail, we continued straight on the Red Sands Trail. After crossing the West Canyon Road, the trail heads into another canyon, turning to the right as the Padre Canyon Trail splits off to the left. At this point, we’ve actually left the state park and entered the Red Mountain Wilderness managed by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management).

The trail was decent, but not as interesting as the trail we did the day before. The most interesting part of the hike was a diversion onto the Hidden Pinyon Trail where it paralleled the Red Sands Trail. As the trail name suggests, most of the hike was through red sand. We covered the 4.1 miles with an elevation gain of 305 feet in two hours and 15 minutes. It was our 66th hike for the year.

After we got back to camp, we tried to diagnose our issues with the automatic stairs. Ann helped Keith as he used a multi-meter to check the wiring harness. All the wires were reading as expected. We then tried applying voltage directly to the motor for the stairs, using our NOCO battery booster (paid link). Nothing. The motor didn’t even make a sound. Not even a click. We concluded that the electronics of the motor were bad.

In order to make our lives easier, Keith removed the stairs motor. Without the motor, the stairs were free to extend. Having stairs again was much nicer than the large step-down onto the step stool. All that was left to do was to figure out how to keep the stairs retracted while we drove down the road. We saved that problem for the following day.

Monday we got our e-bikes out and went for a ride. There is a nice bike trail through the park called Whiptail. There wasn’t an access point to the trail from the campground, so we rode the Snow Canyon Drive a short distance to the south to a trailhead where we cut over to the trail. The park road is not very busy and there is a decent shoulder, so we felt pretty comfortable riding on the road.

We headed south on the trail. It goes to the south entrance of the park and continues into the town of Ivins, a suburb of St. George. Just on the edge of town is Red Mountain Resort. We saw there was a restaurant at the resort called Canyon Breeze. It had mixed reviews in Google Maps, but we decided to try it out anyway.

The restaurant didn’t open up for lunch until 11:30 am. We were about 20 minutes early, so we locked up our bikes at the bike rack and walked over to the nearby Red Mountain Outfitters inside the resort. Keith had lost one of his bike gloves back in Yosemite, so he was looking for replacements. Red Mountain Outfitters didn’t have bike gloves, so they sent us over to Rampage e-Bikes in the strip mall adjacent to the resort. It was a short walk, so we ventured over there. All they had were mountain bike gloves with full fingers. Keith was hoping to have his finger tips free, so he declined.

Lunch was decent. We both had the Banh mi chicken sandwich with jicama and apple slaw. The flavors of the food were nice. However, the French bread used for the sandwiches missed the mark. If you’ve ever had a good French bread, such as the bread served at the chain Paris Banh Mi, then you’ll know what I mean. French bread should have a crispy, yet chewy crust to it when done right.

On our bike ride back, we passed the campground and continued on the trail to the end, at the Tortoise Walk. We locked up our bikes at a picnic table and walked the short, interpretative trail. Signs along the trail had wonderful information about desert tortoises. They can live as long as 60 years and store extra water in their bladders, up to 40% of their body weight. That allows them to go as long as a year without access to water. If you scare a tortoise or pick one up, they may urinate, which may threaten their lives as they lose their water reserve. Tortoises spent most of their time in their burrows, so seeing one is rare. Although we saw a sign in the visitor center that one was spotted the previous week.

From there, we rode the Snow Canyon Drive back to the campground. Back at camp, Keith tried out using a couple of straps to hold the stairs up. Although it would be a little bit of a pain to do often, the straps should due the trick. He used two straps for a little redundancy. We wouldn’t want the steps to extend while we’re driving down the road.

Snow Canyon State Park had just about everything that we like and need. The campground was in a gorgeous setting. Hiking trails and bike paths were easily accessible right from the campground. A variety of wildlife kept us entertained. It was one of our favorite state parks that we’ve been to.

Check out our related video: Snow Canyon State Park, Utah

(Ann)