Exploring St. George, Utah And Temple View RV Resort Review

We recently stopped in St. George, Utah for a visit. Having never been there before we were intrigued by there rich history. We like to visit historical areas and learn what we can. This area is big in Mormon history and seeing that we are not religious at all, we were not sure what we were in for. Well, regardless of your beliefs, this area of the country, and St. George in particular does play a large role in how this country came about. 

The quick version of their history is this…You see, back in the 1800’s the Mormon’s were prevalent in upstate NY (close to where we are from) and in Ohio. People in those areas feared the Mormon faith; the people of that area had driven out the Mormons to find another place to call home. They eventually settled in the Salt Lake City area, led by their President (of the church) Brigham Young. 

Then Brigham Young had a vision to go south and expand. So he sent missionaries south of Salt Lake City to look for more land where they could spread their communities and their faith but also find land to grow cotton to help in the Civil War era. So they packed up their wagons and headed out. Along the way, making camps that eventually turned into small towns. Eventually settling in the St. George, Utah area. So you see, the many smaller communities that you see along Interstate 15 from Salt Lake City to St. George are, from what we understood, towns from those early settlers. Without going into to much detail, as I am not sure I am remembering everything exactly, you can read all about the history of this area here. 

A Temple was built in St. George and visiting it today, it is amazing to see the architecture and quality of the build from that long ago. It looks like it’s not that old and they keep the grounds immaculately clean. While it is considered a sacred place to the LDS (Mormon) community, you cannot go inside it unless you are of the Mormon faith and something is happening inside. They use the Temples for weddings, baptisms and such. The grounds are spacious and well kept and there is a visitor’s center that you are more than welcome to explore. They have videos on the faith and pictures showing the inside of the Temple along with the meaning of the pictures, the faith and what we enjoyed, the history of it all. 

As I said, we are not religious people but exploring this area, you can not deny that the Mormons in this area have a large hand in developing the American landscape that we know today. 

Brigham Young, the President of the LDS Church, had many health issues in his golden years and found the weather in St. George, Utah, being drier and warmer, helped his health. He built a winter home and next to it, an office, where he would travel from Salt Lake City and spend his winters. He would run the church from his office in St. George, all the while taking meetings and receiving dignitaries from all over. 

St. George, Utah is a big snowbird destination. There is a lot of shopping and things to do in the surrounding area. Some parks, both National and State are close by as well as other outdoor adventures. 

While exploring St. George, we stayed at the Temple View RV Resort. While a great location to everything we wanted to do, we were not happy with this park. They did have a really nice community room, pool tables (which we actually saw people using), pool area and such, however, their sites left something to be desired. 

The park is mostly filled with park models and snowbirds, which is fine. They do have one large street that seems to be reserved for longer term RV’s. 

We were booked there for 10 days. Our site was in the back, on all gravel, as most sites are in the southwest area. While it was easy to get in and out of, it was also backed right up to the storage area. If you look at the RV’s positioned behind us in the left picture, those RV’s were in the “storage” area. I put quotes around that, as it was in the same area that we were in, the only difference being they were backed up to the wall.

While we are not opposed to being in an area that is close to the storage area, it is bad in the sense that it felt like we were parked on a busy thru road. The back and forth traffic going in and out of the storage area (both behind us and in the storage area next to us) seemed non-stop. And when someone was not parked next to us, that site then became a busy cut thru to the back. We actually had to move the picnic tables across the area so cars and trailers would not cut thru. 

When cars and trailers were not cutting thru, people walking their dogs were. This had to have been our biggest pet peeve about this park. 

We had already visited Zion National Park and that surrounding area, Hurricane, Utah. So when in St. George, we wanted to hit the highlights of that town. We feel we saw what St. George had to offer and we can honestly say; we’ve done that, now we don’t need to go back. It was too crowded and congested for our liking. So much so that while Verizon phones for calls worked fine, the data was way over saturated. It was almost impossible to connect to Verizon data at all. Thank goodness David carries with us and put up a 5 GHz wifi antenna to connect to the wifi in the air. The 2.4-band was impossible to connect to as it was just over saturated. St. George has essentially over grown itself and the infrastructure has not kept up with the demand. 

So, while Temple View RV Resort was the best park in the area, from what we had read, we would not stay there again. As far as St. George? We’ve been, done that. We see no need to go back. It just wasn’t our favorite.