THE PREPARATIONS:
I prepared our lunches and dinners in advance and put them into metal containers with lids that we'd got from Sam's Club. This allowed us to travel fairly lightly with food for the week.
For breakfasts, we planned on oatmeal and cream of wheat and purchased pancake mix and syrup when we arrived.
THE RESORT:
This resort is one of the Worldmark by Wyndham resorts and it was very nice. We had a 3 bedroom, 2 bath unit that sleeps 8 people. It has a full kitchen with dishes, utensils, cooking items, mixing bowls, measuring cups, and a few basic spices. We also had paper goods included like paper towels, toilet paper and kleenex. We had linens, bath towels, dish towels and kitchen towels included. We could switch our linens and towels for new ones at the linen exchange at any time.
The resort has discounts on many local events and restaurants. We happened to not use any of those, but it's good to know about if you should go there.
Our resort has 2 pools (one with a nice waterfall), 2 kiddie pools and 2 jacuzzis. The first and last hour of the pool time is adults only. This resort was SO quiet and nice.
Our unit had a balcony off the living room that connected to another balcony door off the master bedroom. The balcony had a table and chairs and a barbeque.
We had a flat screen tv with dvd and vcr player in both the living room and the master bedroom. All rooms had dressers with drawers, alarm clocks and ceiling fans. The living room has a fireplace. We also had a laundry room in our unit with a stacking washer and dryer.
There is a fee for high speed internet of $5 a day or $15 for up to 10 days. We opted not to pay for internet since we could get online briefly through Ric's phone as we needed it.
The view off our balcony was lovely. In the mornings, you could not hear anything but a few birds. It was really peaceful and remote from the traffic and noise of the town.
The customer service at the resort was amazing. Even though we have a trial membership and had opted not to purchase, we were treated wonderfully as if we'd paid the same as everyone else there. My husband even asked a special favor to have a lock put on our bedroom door for the length of our 5 day stay and it was done the following morning.
There's plenty of covered parking to keep your car cool.
THE TRIP:
There are so many great free things to do in St George. We thought about doing some of the low cost things (like the $3 per person art museum) but decided that even $20 extra was not going to be wise for us with our current budget. This is what we did:
MONDAY:
Breakfast, check out the swimming pool with the younger kids.
Relax and enjoy the resort. Lunch.
Start the Walking Tour of Historic Downtown (this map was available at our resort, but you can get the same pamphlet in color at the tabernacle at the square downtown.)
Do 1/3 of the Walking Tour, including the Tabernacle Tour.
Play in the stream and splash pad outside of the Square. (7 North Main, there's also a library near there which we never made it to because we had so much to do already!)
Return to Resort for dinner. (Dinner was easy because it was already made and cooked in the metal trays. I put it into the oven before we left and set the cooking times to warm it up and then automatically shut the oven off so it would wait for us and be ready when we walked in.)
Family Home Evening.
TUESDAY:
Breakfast, get ready to head out for the day (put lunch into the oven and set the timer)
Continue 2nd third of the Walking Tour, including the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum.
Spend time playing at the Splash Pad to cool off.
Return to Resort for lunch, rest, and swimming pool.
Barbeque Ribs for dinner. (this was the only dinner not made in advance. It made a huge mess. Next time I think I'll have it closer to finished and do only the final carmelizing on the bbq. We made a TON of ribs and snacked on them all week.)
Watched movies we had on our TiVo we brought with us.
WEDNESDAY:
Breakfast.
Sent the older boys in the car to the St George temple to do baptisms. Ric and I took Sawyer and Annalyn to the office to hear the presentation we'd agreed to listen to as part of our discounted trial membership. It took about 20 minutes and the kids got to drink soda and play with toys while we were there. No pressure, they were very polite. (This style of long term pre-paid vacation is not something I prefer to do so we did not buy. I have no complaints about the company or even their prices. I would recommend a trial membership to anyone considering it. It's cheaper per point than their regular membership and we will get 2-3 family vacations out of it. This company no longer has an office in Salt Lake so they will even offer to put you up in one of their closer resorts to hear their low pressure presentation. If you get the chance to do that, it's completely worth it to stay free in their amazing resort in exchange for just listening to them for a short while. Don't do it if you don't trust yourself not to buy and then regret it, but if you are comfortable saying no to things that won't work for you, then I definitely recommend it.)
This was our afternoon to play at the resort all day. After lunch, we all went down to the pool together for hours. At this time of year, there were few kids at the resort and nearly anytime we went to the pool we were alone or almost alone.
Magic happens when the seven of us all do something together. The pool day was so much more fun than I thought it would be. I don't love swimming so I swam a little, rested in the shade a little and sat in the jacuzzi a little. Ric played a lot of games with the kids and even raced against them.
Dinner and more relaxing back at our room. We were pretty tired.
THURSDAY:
Breakfast. Get ready for the day. Put food in the oven.
Drive to Snow Canyon (this is the ONLY thing we spent money on for the trip other than our few groceries and gasoline. It's $6 per car for the day.)
Snow Canyon is lovely and amazing. It has trails of varying lengths and difficulties. There are bathrooms and picnic areas. (We brought plenty of water and an umbrella for shade) The kids had much fun climbing. RJ especially loved climbing and exploring. We stayed until the day grew warm and everyone voted to move on. There was plenty more to see there and we'll likely go another time. The colors are BEAUTIFUL. Some families have said they spent every day of their vacations just taking their kids here to play.
Go back to the Square to finish our Walking Tour with Brigham Young's Winter Home. We considered going to the splash pad again, but the kids voted to return for lunch and the swimming pool instead.
After food and swimming, Ric and I went to a session at the temple while the kids stayed at the resort and watched tv.
FRIDAY:
Breakfast and our last chance at the pool.
Pack up and check out at noon.
Go to the Visitor's Center at the St George Temple. We'd been told at the other church locations that there was a special art exhibit opening on Friday morning. It was amazing.
After the art exhibit, we asked to see the movie about President Thomas S. Monson.
There's a children's section with many of the church commercials. I had seen this one of Brooks before and we were lucky to find it among the ones they were showing.
Picnicked at the Splash Pad and let the kids play in the water.
Left St George for the trip home. Stopped at Historic Cove Fort on the way and took the tour there.
And THAT was our amazing, FREE vacation. We didn't even do all the stuff there was to do. My kids could have played at that splash pad every afternoon. The walking tour can take 3-4 days if you go to a few things each day (it starts to get hot after that and people start to get hungry) and include one church site (with live tours and great stories) each day. There's plenty more movies to see at the temple visitor's center. There are also plenty of paid events that vary in their affordability.
St George is GORGEOUS! [GEORGEous, my husband would say, but, he's goofy like that. Also, he's had plenty of years to think up that pun.] Take your family and check it out!
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