What do they do in Utah on Sunday?

While planning this journey, I had promised today, Sunday, 9/13, the first professional football Sunday, to YD. It was a travel day, Grand Canyon to Zion, a 5+ hr trip. Amazingly, the hotel we were staying at in GC had a sports bar, but we weren't sure exactly what satellite feed they had and/or which games they would be able to get, and neither did anyone working Sat night. Our options were to hang out in GC until 1:15 when the Giants game would be starting in our time zone and hope for the best, and then either have to start the long drive after the game, or worse yet, discover the game wouldn't be shown, and have wasted much of the day waiting, and then she would miss the game for sure.

We decided to try to catch the game on the road. If you check the route from the GC to Zion, you notice that it is so unpopulated that there is not a single town listed on the map for the first 80% of the drive. Which meant that in order to be in someplace that might possibly have the game, we would have to leave by about 8AM. YD is not fond of getting up early, to say the least, but for football, she said absolutely, we would hit the road by 8. We spend Sat night googling sports bars in the few towns that we would pass through right outside of Zion. Our best bet seemed to be St. George, Utah, which was somewhat out of the way, but I had promised her this day, and we did not have to be in Zion at any set time. We had found a couple of other options on the way that we would check out as well.

We got on our way right on time, and the long drive went by in a flash. The scenery on the drive is spectacular. From crossing the Colorado river in Glen Canyon by Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam, to the painted desert and Vermillion cliffs of Arizona, we were mesmerized. True to form, we did not see a single town with more than a handful of shacks/trailers/houses along the route until we came to Hurricane, Utah, where we had found a sports bar listed on Google. It was just about game time and YD was getting itchy. We find the bar. It is closed. A sports bar that is closed on Sundays? What is the point of that? YD is panicking. We are only about 15 min out of St. George, we follow Lucille's (the GPS) directions, but she didn't like the address we had, and she hasn't been updated in 3 yrs, and the roads were new, and we can't find it. Then, like a beacon across the highway, I see a sign for the bar we are looking for. We follow it, and blessedly, not only is it open, but there is a big sign outside saying that all NFL games can be seen there. YD is ecstatic. As we run inside we see the Giants game on the first 2 big screens, and get a booth so each of us can see our own screen. Oh joy. This is a serious sports bar, there are a million TV's, both NFL games are on, as well as the US Open, and other stuff. A total of 2 booths are taken, plus some scattered people at the bar. On opening football Sunday, this place is nearly deserted. And it's a nice place. Not just a bar, a full restaurant, too. What do the people of Utah do on Fall/Winter Sunday afternoons? Whatever, since it was so empty they did not mind in the least that we sat at a booth for 3+ watching the entire game and only ordered a salad a small pizza between the 2 of us.

From there it was a relatively short ride to (and through, since we came in the west entrance and our hotel was on the eastern side, oops!) Zion, where we arrived at our hotel in time for the night game on ABC. Tomorrow, thank goodness, we get to get off our behinds and do some hiking in the park, which looked as spectacular as expected on our drive through.