sauergeek

Flew from Washington Dulles to Las Vegas McCarran on Friday night. Dinner was a small pizza (resold Uno's) and beer (Old Dominion) in one of three Dulles Old Dominion pubs. The flight was uneventful. Landed at McCarran just before 11 PM Las Vegas time.

jiapa had arrived from NYC at closer to 10 PM. After a longer-than-expected delay for checked baggage, we picked up the rental car and found the hotel[1]. We crashed after 1 AM Las Vegas time -- after 4 AM Eastern.

Got up the next morning at about 9 local time. Based on recommendations from

jiapa's coworkers, we added Zion National Park to the list of places to go, and decided to go there first. We packed up and went downstairs in hopes of finding breakfast. After one look at the hotel's smoky-lobby restaurant for breakfast, we punted for elsewhere. The goal was to find an IHOP for pancakes. We ended up settling for a Howard Johnson, which was... adequate. Barely.

The car was wet this morning; it had been wet the night before in the car rental lot. Las Vegas was getting sporadic rain. While we drove northeast, the rain picked up, became continuous, and then turned to snow. Er, this is supposed to be a desert, right?

Along the way, I made a minor navigational error -- I completely missed our exit for the south entrance of the park, and didn't notice until I saw signs for the north entrance to the park, 24 miles farther along. Per the guidebooks, the road past the north entrance is supposed to be scenic, so we figured we'd stop in as long as we were there. However, the road was temporarily closed due to the snow, so after buying a year-long National Park Service admission pass[2], we headed back down I-15 to the exit for the south entrance.

We stopped by a tourist-trap shop in Springdale, UT[3] to look around at their collection of local semi-precious gemstones (highly variable quality, but some quite good) and finished jewelry. The lady behind the counter -- at least 60 years old, probably 70 -- said she had never seen snow stay around this long in the area. Her mother, age 92, had, but only when she was a little girl. So we're seeing decidedly unusual weather for this part of the world.

After reviewing the guidebooks for hotel recommendations, we settled on Flanigans Inn. Room rate was $59/night.[4] We immediately went to try the scenic Zion Canyon drive, as by now it was 4 PM and the light was likely to fail by 6 PM. Unfortunately, there was too much snow falling to see much of the scenery -- mountain tops at over 6,000 feet are hard to see when the overcast is floating around 4,600 feet -- but what we could see was gorgeous.

jiapa took some pictures, which are not yet online, but which include a prickly pear cactus with a lot of snow on it. We're hoping for better weather tomorrow.

Dinner was at The Spotted Dog Cafe, which is the restaurant at Flanigans.

We started with baked Brie, which came with slices of oil-baked bread (zweiback?), green apple slices, and a pureed red bell pepper sauce. Yum; melted Brie and fruit on crunchy bread is hard to mess up. Next was a maple-butternut-squash-walnut soup that was astoundingly good: distinct maple flavor without overpowering sweetness, well-cooked and -pureed butternut squash, with small chunks of walnut for a nice textural difference while reminding you that butternut squash really does have a nutty flavor. The soup was for

jiapa, but I suspect I ate about half. I had an excellent baby-spinach salad with a surprisingly zippy honey-mustard dressing, dried cranberries, and more green apple slices;

jiapa demolished about half, all the while claiming to not like spinach or mustard. The spinach in the salad was remarkably non-bitter, with its strong flavor standing clear yet mixing well with the strong flavor of the cranberries and the honey mustard dressing.

About halfway through the soup/salad the bread showed up, complete with a niftily-shaped dollop of butter and a bulb of roasted garlic. Unfortunately, the bread was bland and tasted like it had come from a low-end grocery store; some of it was slightly stale. The roasted garlic was bland, and lacking in the roasted flavor I associate with roasted garlic; I'm not sure what went wrong there.

For our entrees,

jiapa had the red trout with pumpkin seeds (a la trout almondine, but with pumpmkin seeds instead) with wild rice and vegetables. Red trout is local to this part of the world, so it was likely the freshest thing on the menu. The trout with the pumpkin seeds on top was tasty; trout is fattier than I recall. The skin was well-cooked without being burned, and went well wrapped around some of the wild rice.

jiapa sampled Brussels sprouts (that being part of the vegetables) for the first time, and pronounced them bitter cabbage -- which is what they are unless you're one of the people who think they taste like soap.

I had the salmon with chipotle hollandaise with wild rice and vegetables. Neither

jiapa nor I noticed the presence of the (admittedly mild) chipotle peppers --

jiapa has lower hot tolerance than I do. The salmon was Pacific Northwest smoked, slightly dry and with a distinct smoky flavor. The hollandaise made up for the slight dryness of the salmon; it also tasted wonderful in the rice.

To drink, I started with the Spotted Dog Ale, just because it was the house beer. It turned out to be a medium amber beer with a surprisingly strong, flowery hop nose. In flavor, it was a good amber, with not quite enough hops to qualify as IPA-strength, but far stronger than the average bitter or pale ale. When the entrees came up, I shifted to a hefeweizen (local microbrew, but I've lost the name) as it would go better with the fish. It was a fairly standard hefeweizen: low hops, low assertiveness, tasted right.

We were too full to try their desserts.

I'd go back to The Spotted Dog again -- and may well, for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Here's hoping for less snow on Sunday.

1. I would recommend against the Best Western Mardi Gras in Las Vegas. The bed sagged in the middle. The showerhead left a lot to be desired: it purported to be adjustable, but wasn't; and it only sprayed water from the center (nominally jet) part, and only half of that. One of the light bulbs in the room was burned out (and I don't think it went when I turned on that light). There was at least one cigarette burn hole in the bedspread. Rating: lame.

2. Admission for a week to Zion National Park is $20. Admission for a week to the Grand Canyon National Park is $20. Admission for a week to Death Valley National Park is $20. The year-long pass costs $50. Easy decision.

3. Springdale, UT is immediately outside the south entrance of Zion National Park.

4. This was discounted past their usual off-season rate; not sure why, but the discount was spontaneous on the part of the check-in clerk. The usual rate for this room would be $79/night.