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ZION. Bryce. Capitol Reef. The North Rim.

What about St. George? Just a spot to refuel the kids and the car on the way to those magical kingdoms of chasm and red rock.

But after decades of passing through, I made the high-desert town in southern Utah my destination in April. As it turns out, I should have done it long ago.

St. George is ringed by black lava flows, crimson sandstone bluffs and faraway pine-clad mountains. Nearly 70,000 people now call it home (or a second home), more than a few of them Californians attracted by its lung-clearing, mind-relaxing wide-open spaces.

On our first morning here, the late-spring air verily snapped as Michelin Man clouds ambled overhead. My wife, Terri, and I are situational hikers, which means we're as lazy as Labs at home but eager to paw dust and rock out on the road. We headed immediately to Snow Canyon.

Perish any images of ski resorts. Even in winter, the white stuff is a rarity. Snow Canyon, named after Lorenzo and Erastus Snow, pioneering Mormons with a cold-season surname, is a whole lot of Western wonders in one handy-size state park just minutes outside town. Fire-hued rock? Got it. Sculptured canyons? Uh-huh. Petrified stuff? Check. The obligatory backdrop for horse operas? Well, Robert Redford seems to have spent some time shooting here — including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Jeremiah Johnson."

We started on the Whiterocks Trail/Lava Flow Overlook, a "moderate" four-miler out and back. (We found the rangers overly cautious when ranking hikes.) About half a mile in, big billows of black broke the surface: lava in a sea of sandstone. The frozen rock was a sharp — literal, figurative — contrast to the chalk, canary and vermilion striations of the former lake bottom.

The trail forked, with one tine heading down into a sandy-bottomed, high-walled canyon. The path Robert Frost would have advised taking turned northward and climbed gently through pinyon and junipers groaning under loads of berries. A shoulder of rock threatened our progress, but we scrambled up and over and, not far beyond, reached a natural band shell the color of drying plaster.

The Whiterocks Trail is one of about a dozen that fan out through the park heading to dunes, eroded cisterns, a small slot canyon, or about 200 technical climbing routes for those who think hiking should be vertical. A gentle, six-mile paved trail opens the canyon to walkers, in-line skaters and bikers of all abilities.

Just off the southerly portal to Snow Canyon State Park is Tuacahn Center for the Arts, a 2,000-seat amphitheater for concerts and live theater ("Peter Pan" and "Cats" are on tap this summer) suspended within a red-rock canyon.

We hit a home run with "Damn Yankees," the Faust-meets-baseball classic, which was playing at the St. George Musical Theater. Regular folks run the joint, build the sets, sell the tickets and don the costumes. A few dance steps missed here, a note off there; the audience cared not, and the joy of the craft was evident in each performer.

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The hub of 'Dixie'

ST. GEORGE was founded during the Civil War by hardy missionary pioneers set forth from the Salt Lake basin by Brigham Young, who headed the Mormon Church from 1847 to 1877. It's the hub of Utah's "Dixie" — so-called because those first settlers came to plant cotton and other warmer-weather crops, taking advantage of the Virgin River Valley's unusually temperate climate.

Young spent the last winters of his life in St. George, his health, too, benefiting from the climate. That made him — as we were told several times during our stay — St. George's first snowbird.

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