My motel near Bryce was the Riverside Resort in Hatch, Utah. It seemed like all the motels in Hatch also had an attached restaurant and mini-mart, and this one was no exception. This one also had an RV park, ATV tours, horse rides, and I don't know how many other adventure activities on offer. In fact, it only had 13 actual motel rooms.
I'd been a bit curious as to why their reservation page asked at what time I expected to arrive. Perhaps if I'd guessed better, there would have been someone to greet me. As it was, the guy working at the mini-mart had to run over to help check me in. He also informed me that their restaurant had had a fire just 5 days before, but I'd get the standard 10% motel discount if they happened to reopen that day. (They didn't.)
His other recommendation was the Adobe Cafe, but they weren't open at 4:30pm. On the assumption that they'd open later, I hung out and read a book until 6, then tried again, but they still weren't open. So I drove through town, and that's when I noticed that all three other motels also had attached restaurants. I returned to the classiest looking one, Mountain Harvest, where I had to pass through the mini-mart on the way into the restaurant. The lady at the cash register was ringing up someone's purchases, and she asked me to hold on, and she'd seat me.
While I was waiting, I read the special board: sliced beef with potato and sauteed vegetables. On the table just next to the board was a perfect steaming representation of the meal. I was just wondering how they managed to keep it looking so fresh when the cook came out and sat down to his meal. Oh. (I could tell he was the cook because his nametag said "COOK".)
After being seated and scanning the menu, I decided that the sliced beef looked fine, so I ordered some of that. After the hostess/cashier relayed my order to the cook, he took a few more minutes to let me think about how I was interrupting his dinner before he went in to make mine.
The restaurant only had seven tables, and at first I was the only one there. Others did come in later, though, and a lot of them seemed to be local or semi-local. Judging from the comments to the hostess, a lot of restaurants are closed on Mondays in Utah, and I wasn't the only person glad to find an open one.
The Riverside Resort was eccentric in a few different ways, one of which was to have the air conditioning on a light switch. There was also a temperature control panel on the wall, but I didn't discover until the next morning that that was only for the heater; the AC was a simple on/off deal. They must have fought all night.
My room also didn't have blackout curtains, but that didn't stop me from going to sleep at 7:40pm.
