The St. George Vacation

Sadly, I only kept one journal entry for the entire four days or so I was in St. George and Las Vegas. Darnit. Oh well, we have a few pictures I’ll upload later. And I apologize for the second half of this blog sounding like a Worldmark advertisement! Anyway, here’s the entry…

Barnson St. George Vacation, Day 2

The sounds of a waterfall and the squeals of delighted children waft up to my ears on the second floor balcony of the “Worldmark the Club” St. George resort.  Some more hardy souls, all children, brave the sixty-eight degree weather to snorkel in the pool beneath the small waterfall.  As I peer down now, though, most are, instead, hanging out in the hot tub.

My children are playing on the playset in the sand near the pool, obliviously sliding down the slide, swinging, and traversing the horizontal bars, without a care in the world.  They seem grateful to be outside playing in a small “park” after several weeks of cold weather in our native Tooele.

It’s amazing to me what a difference in the weather a few thousand feet of elevation and five and a half hours of driving can bring.  Utah’s Dixie is really, really different from the area around Salt Lake we just left.  In the Salt Lake/Provo area, we had left in the midst of a driving rain/sleet combination, with the precipitation falling so fast and thick that we were often relegated to driving forty miles per hour in the midst of a sixty-five zone.  Traffic was heavy, accidents were littering the sides of the freeway, and it was rather stressful.  About ten miles south of Provo on I-15, though, traffic finally cleared out, the rain lifted, and the rest of our trip was rather uneventful, except for a few bathroom breaks and a gas stop.

We scheduled this trip, ostensibly, to attend the wedding of Christy’s first cousin, Heidi.  Heidi’s getting married in Vegas to some guy who’s name neither one of us can recall at the moment.  Apparently, the two knew each other in high school.  They had crushes on one another in high school, and never pursued anything… apparently, he’s been married and now divorced after several children.  They ended up on the same airplane together, began comparing stories, and decided to begin seeing more of one another.  They did a long-distance dating thing, with him in Las Vegas and her in Orem.  And now they’re getting hitched.  Pretty cool for them, and a great excuse for us to get out and chill out!

The St. George Worldmark resort is pretty nice.  If you aren’t a Worldmark owner, and have a chance to sit through a Trendwest Resorts presentation, here’s what I suggest:

1. Be sure you have about $8,000 to spare.  That’s the going rate for a minimum entry into “the club”.  For those yearly vacations, I consider this number totally worth it.  We haven’t been to a Worldmark resort yet that we did not like.  If you can’t afford that amount of money in cash (you can bet your butt we didn’t have that kind of dough laying around), then you can normally get financing for under $200 a month.  Trendwest, Worldmark’s promotional contractor, will finance you, but they charge relatively high interest rates.  Better to walk in knowing exactly how much money you have to invest.  That $8,000 will buy you roughly the equivalent of a week of vacation at a nice resort somewhere in the western U.S.
2. Ensure you can afford about $400 per year in maintenance fees.
3. Hawaii, Australia, and RCI exchanges are relatively expensive places (in points you purchased) to attend.  Even with a modest amount of points, though, you can make it there on a minimum investment.  You just need to save all of last year’s points, use this year’s points, and borrow against next year’s points 🙂  Not too big a deal.
4. Here’s our favorite part: make sure you have some Worldmark resorts close enough to drive to easily.  They have a feature called “Bonus Time”.  Basically, if the resort has rooms free, if you schedule with two weeks notice or less, you can go to the resort without spending your yearly points, and just pay a fee based on the season and “color” of the resort you’re going to.  The Las Vegas resorts, for instance, are red year-round.  Bear Lake, in Utah, is very cheap in the spring and fall because, well, you can’t ski there in either season, and you can’t swim very easily there in either season.  It’s very nice for a cozy getaway for two or for a family.
5. Your membership is an asset.  You can sell it, give it away, or let friends use it.
6. Once you’re a member, expect every-other-month calls from a Trendwest representative trying to get you to buy more points, sign up for some new promotional deal, or whatnot.  That’s a small annoyance, but it doesn’t take us much to say “no”.  I make sure and  differentiate the marketing company, Trendwest, from the wonderful resort company, Worldmark the Club.  The Club rocks; the marketing company is, well, a marketing company 🙂

We really love it.  Our traditional arrangement these days is a 2-bedroom condo.  They are quite nice.  They always have a kitchen with good cooking amenities (for us, pretty equivalent to our home, but fewer dishes), and a pull-down “Murphy Bed” built into the wall of the common room.  This room we’re in now has huge walk-in closets for both bedrooms.  We’ve never been in a Worldmark room that wasn’t really well-designed and comfortable.  They spend a lot of time on the decor of their resorts, and it shows.  This is no hotel room.  We really feel like we have a temporary home here.  And often, we find ourselves wishing we could stay a lot longer!

Heh, the only tough question is, “is it worth the $8000 debt and $400/year we spend?”  In my opinion, absolutely.  We’ve paid some interest, but built great memories.  And knowing that we have a yearly budget for vacations that amounts to several thousand dollars, and points we need to spend or else they will expire, gives us an incentive to make time every year to go on vacation together as a family.

These are precious memories that are worth any price, in my opinion.