Description: There are lots of hotels along Zion Park Boulevard, the two-lane approach to the park that runs through the town of Springdale. Your options run from bare bones motels to national chains to locally-owned resorts, and nearly all will have nice views of the sandstone walls behind them, since Springdale sits in the wider southern end of Zion Canyon.
If you’re looking for a simple, reasonably priced place to stay, you can’t do much better than Terrace Brook Lodge. On the west side of the boulevard, about a mile from the park, this place changed hands over the winter after we made our reservation, but they honored the price we were quoted. We arrived near dinnertime after the drive from Las Vegas, ready to unload our suitcases and head into the park for the last few hours before sunset. Jay, the new owner, told us that our reserved room wasn’t available because it had been damaged, and his maintenance man wouldn’t be in until the next day (an energetic toddler had yanked a curtain rod off the wall). We’d reserved a family room with 3 queen beds distributed among separate bedrooms for the reasonable price of $94, and he was planning to put us in the family suite around back or in a pair of adjoining rooms. This was a palatial layout of bedrooms, living rooms, and a somewhat oddly located kitchen, but as we walked around it, he wasn’t satisfied with the job his cleaning crew had done.
I asked for two adjoining motel rooms, and he was happy to oblige. There are two motel-style units here, one behind the other, with the lower one facing the parking lot along the Boulevard. Our unit was pretty separated from the road, and if there was any traffic noise, we never heard it. We ended up in a pair of ground floor, 2-queen bedrooms connected by an interior door. Each had cable TV, moderately-quiet wall-unit AC, a coffeemaker, park and area brochures, and a small but clean bathroom. Both were reasonably sized, but our room ran along the back of the unit, with views out the window to the cliffs beyond, and was particularly spacious. These accommodations weren’t fancy, but they were clean, quiet, and just fine as a place to sleep before heading into the park. You’d rather spend your time
there, anyways.
The new owner has already added some twists. It’s now possible to make reservations online, for one, a feature many other hotels in this price range don’t have. A minimal continental breakfast (donuts and coffee) is also available in the small office (don’t plan on eating here) starting at 7 am, but we were gone before that began. If you want a memorable hotel experience, you should probably head for Flanigan’s, Majestic View Lodge, or Desert Pearl Inn; but then you’ll be tempted to spend your time there instead of in the park.
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