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This is a posting about our stay at the Iron Gate Inn in Cedar City, Utah while we enjoyed a weekend at the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
CEDAR CITY, UTAH (July 27, 2008) – There’s nothing better than making new friends. Susan and CR Wooten are the latest.
Susan and CR own this inviting bed and breakfast, the Iron Gate Inn which is also known as The 1897 Iron Gate.
My wife Teri and I, along with our friends Frank and Gerri Tussing, spent a delightful, intellectually stimulating, and relaxing weekend with Susan and CR as we saw four plays at the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
The Iron Gate has seven rooms, a guest cottage, and a carriage house. All together they can take 26 people at one time. The grounds resemble an English garden; so much so that locals have weddings, receptions, and baby showers here.
The rooms are tastefully decorated with various Americana. The house’s structure, though originally built in 1897, has been renovated. All the amenities are there – even wireless. The only thing missing from the rooms is television which is typical in most B&Bs. You can even bring a small dog to stay in the cottage. (Check with them ahead of time.)
What sets The Iron Gate apart is Susan and CR. Guys, there’s good news and bad news: Susan’s very attractive; CR’s a big man who worked construction. But that’s not it. And it’s not the fact that she is an interior designer that makes the house so inviting. And it’s not CR’s construction background that makes the house so livable. No, it’s simply them.
“We like to interact with our customers,” Susan told us. They spent time between shows with us offering us wine and snacks. We even spent a late Saturday night discussing everything from Shakespeare to living in Las Vegas, which they did for ten years. They did this with all their guests this weekend. “We get to know what our customers really like,” she explains.
We saw it first hand. A restaurant lost our reservation for dinner. Susan was on the phone to the restaurant, using her contacts from the past six years to make sure we got the reservation and would be on time for the show.
When Susan found out Teri didn’t like bananas, which would be the foundation for one of her great breakfasts, she made Teri a special eggs, cheese, and spinach dish. It was waiting for Teri in the morning.
That’s the only thing she Susan requests of her guests: “If you got something you can’t eat, tell me ahead of time.” She wants to avoid any food allergies.
Don’t think they’re intrusive, though. As Gerri says, she and Frank always go back because of the combination of “privacy and sociability. We never feel like we’re intruding on them.” And vice versa.
There’s a delicate balance here Susan and CR seem to have found. It’s a difficult task to make someone feel your home is their home while also making them feel like special guests. So if you enjoy the B&B owner you only see for breakfasts or to drop off the key, then this could be a place for you as well.
Susan told us about one of their first guests – a newly married couple. They made “themselves at home’ by coming down to breakfast in their pajamas, but besides that, they stayed in their honeymoon room and “we didn’t see too much of them,” Susan explained.
Cedar City is not a hotbed of nightlife. Sure, there are bars; it’s not entirely dry in this Mormon town. But if you’re looking for an all-out party, you’ll have a hard time finding it here.
This is a place to getaway from it all. Susan directed us to an incredible hiking trail that meandered along some rivers and water falls while we saw some of those salmon-colored mountains. After a good hike, there is plenty to enjoy around the Shakespeare festival and with the addition of some decent restaurants. The two we enjoyed were: Milt’s Ranch House, a ten minute drive on the highway; and The Garden House which is walking distance from The Iron Gate.
Besides their website, Susan and CR do little advertising. Word of mouth works best. That’s how we got here. Frank and Gerri have stayed there three other times, so we didn’t question their choice.
And that’s the way Susan and CR like it. She told me the only thing more exciting than meeting new people is knowing their previous customers are returning.
Enjoy some time with them. I highly recommend it. As I write this, we’re planning a September weekend with Gaius Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony, Brutus and the gang, and of course, Susan and CR.
Disclosure here: I have no financial agreement with CR and Susan.
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July 27th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
[…] RSS FeedDALY TRAVEL Shakespeare in Utah This is a posting about a weekend in Cedar City, Utah attending the Utah Shakespearean Festival at Southern Utah University. I highly recommend you take some time there during remainder of the summer and into the fall. I also recommend a stay at the Iron Gate Inn which you can read about in an earlier post. […]