Utah – Page 2 – TooBusyForWork

Go north young (wo)man!

We left Overton, NV and headed north. The weather was a bit cold and snowy on both alternatives, and the northern route was a lot less driving. We chose to spend 2 nights at the Kaibab Paiute Tribal RV Park at Pipe Spring National Monument. Full hookups, reasonable price, and big roomy sites. The drive her was lovely, heading up through St. George, UT and Hurricane, UT, just south of Zion National Park. We are in an area of high red mesas, and it is gorgeous! Normally I wouldn’t post this quickly after my last post, but we took an enjoyable drive along the Smithsonian Butte Backcountry Scenic Byway. The northern end is in Zion National Park, but the road was very muddy, and we didn’t make it all the way. We did enjoy what we drove though.

Getting there means driving through the former FLDS towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT. We have been through them a number of years ago, and they were really depressing. Their “prophet” was sitting in jail for child molestation, and they were really rudderless. A trust was running the towns under the auspices of the state governments and a judge. The difference now is significant! Lots of new businesses, new housing, lots of non-FLDS folks walking around. It still has areas of decaying homes and yards overrun with trash and weeds, but there were fewer than the last time we came through when we visited Pipe Springs for the first time.

Once we were on the Byway, the views just opened up.

The entire area was getting pop up snow or rain showers, depending on elevation. I think this captures the true definition of a forecast for “partly cloudy with scattered showers.”

Tomorrow we are going to Page, AZ, staying with friends at their rural spot. Undoubtably there will be more sightseeing and more pictures then.

Salt Lake City #2 and St.George

It was quite cool and wet on Monday, so we didn’t do an awful lot. We did get some shopping done, and we had a good meeting with our financial planner. We have a short term financial contract that expires next summer, and I will be going on social security next year at age 66. So we really needed to chat face to face about some options. Now that we have talked through it, we can do the rest over email and the phone when the time comes. We ate dinner at a lovely Mediterranean place called Mazzo’s. I recommend it.

Tuesday was a very enjoyable day though. The weather cleared, and the mountains were beautiful. There was no way I could get a good picture, so you will have to take my word for it! We also did a major shopping trip to Trader Joe’s for the last time this year. A follow-on trip to Smith’s grocery stores for a pork butt followed. We were having friends over, and I wanted to make pulled pork. A good rub, a bit of chicken brother, and 60 minutes in the instant pot (plus 20 minutes pressure release) made a gorgeous base for pulled pork.

I decided on a baked potato bar with pork, cheese, broccoli, butter, sour cream, and green onions. I did debate how to cook 10 potatoes in the motorhome. Should I use the “automatic” function? Combo micro/convection but manual? Or do I do it the old fashioned way and just oil them, sprinkle with kosher salt, and bake them at 400 for an hour? I ended up old fashioned because I wanted a nice crisp skin on the potatoes, and it worked. Of course we also had the complication of the campground power going out! I had to run the generator for about 3 hours since I was using the Instant Pot, the convection oven, and the washer and dryer. Luckily no one was around to bother with the noise, though the in-coach generator isn’t terribly loud. Any generator is annoying to me though, but the bigger heating appliances don’t work on battery power.

We did have a great time with a bunch of my choir buddies. They even did the dishes! We were able to finish off the flan too.

This morning we were out of the campground a little after 9:00 am for the drive through town and on to St.George, UT. I timed it so I didn’t have to drive in heavy traffic, but oh my, was the road bad for about 5-7 miles in northern Utah county! It was a construction zone, and the road was uneven and had little wiggles, not curves, just wiggles that were hard to see the marking for. Once we got through that it was smooth sailing.

As we got near Kolob Canyon, the landscape started showing its renowned red rock beauty. The land is so big that I just can’t get a picture of it, but you have probably seen them other places. I started feeling I could breath again in the dry, clear air with space all around.

We are saying at our normal St.George spot, Temple View RV Park. We got a huge pull-through site, and the temperature of 80 degrees at 4:00 pm convinced me I could start wearing sandals again. We sat outside for quite a while, then went to dinner. As we left the restaurant, the hills were just finishing some reflected beauty. Again, my camera can’t capture the breath of the view, but I at least tried.

The view was somewhat spoiled by businesses

But I cut the businesses out of this one.

Tomorrow we head towards Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. It has a no-reservation campground, so we are going to get there early. Hope we find a spot!

Salt Lake City #1

It isn’t that I think SLC is the best city in the nation/world, but that I expect to have two posts while we are here.

We did have an easy ride through SLC on I-15 because we timed it that way. I have found pretty much any city is the easiest to drive through between 10 and 2, so we cruised through between 12 and 1, arriving at the KOA around 1:30. This is a nice KOA with lots of trees and even some grass. The sites are big for a RV park, with maybe 10’ between rigs. We got settled in and generally just relaxed. The. Verizon signal is ok here, so I downloaded a number of television episodes in preparation for no signal in Death Valley.

Saturday we took a drive to one of our favorite places, Antelope Island State Park. Weather was definitely coming in, and sadly there was quite a bit of haze. I still took a couple of pictures of the mountains across the lake.

The lake surprisingly wasn’t too low, or at least not for late fall. When I first moved to the area in 2012, we could canoe all around the island. Now you can only paddle around the western side because Farmington Bat on the east is only a couple of inches deep near the island. Sad. All the people on the Wasatch Front are using up the mountain water before it reaches the Great Salt Lake.
We also did some shopping. A particularly interesting purchase was a dozen 4 oz. canning jars to make flan sous vide, as described by the server at the Basque restaurant a few days ago. I use my immersion blender to mix these up, and it works great. Here is Kevin’s sous vide setup using a small ice chest.

And inside were 8 jars of flan plus one jar of left over custard.

Sorry for the poor quality. My high res version got deleted!

The results (samples this morning) were fantastic! Smooth and silky, though not easy to get out of the jars.

This morning we went to our old church, First Presbyterian, and I sang in the choir. It was great fun hanging out with my old friends and singing again. A small group of us went to lunch at a great Greek place called “The Other Place.” It has been around for years, but we never went before for some reason. That was definitely our mistake! It has been family run for about 40 years, and the food was food was great. We both had breakfast, but some of our friends have the lunches, and they were huge. I want to come back because they also have liver and onions, a weakness of mine.

Kodachrome Basin State Park

Last January we made reservations for Kodachrome State Park in southern Utah. Spring is the most popular time, and reservations are truly necessary in this popular spot. We were able to get a lovely site with full hookups for only $30 a night, pretty good! There was no cell service, so we kept having to go to town to check on emails and texts to deal with selling the house.We had some friends join us, and we had a lovely time. I am going to add a lot of pictures, so be prepared.

Sorry for the antenna, but this is the general look of the area. Lots of rolling hills and mountains with juniper and sage.

While this part of the country is know for its red rocks, there are some big white bluffs too. Much of the white is clay, and it was mined extensively in the area.

This is a view of the area from the scenic byway Highway 12. We took an entire day to drive the 70 or so miles to and from the town of Boulder. Absolutely gorgeous.

On another day we went to Bryce Canyon National Park. It is high enough in elevation that it has lines instead of junipers, and snow was on the ground above 8000’.

View from a lookout at Bryce.

Nice arch at Bryce.

We also drove a rough dirt road, Cottonwood Canyon Road, to Grosvenor Arch. This is a well signed BLM site with picnic tables, a toilet, and a paved walkway that went most of the way to the arch. It was quite impressive – a full double arch that just opened up before you. Quite cathedral – like.

Kodachrome Basin is definitely off the beaten path, but well worth a detour. Mostly full hookup sites, 50amp electrical service, with a few no hookup sites available. All are reservable, and you need to reserve if you want a site. Almost all the sites will accommodate a big motorhome or fifth wheel with ease. Our friends had an electric site for the first 2 nights, but had to move to a non-electric on the third night. We shared cooking duties. She made sloppy joes with a wonderful fresh salad on her cooking night, and I made baby back ribs in the Instant Pot with pan fried potatoes, onion, and peppers on my night. Yum.

Too much going on to post!

Well the house in Utah has sold, and we have bought a house in Iowa. The prices in the Salt Lake City area are quite high compared to Iowa, so we were able to get a really nice new construction place with better features than the one we sold. About the same size, but with granite countertops, a three car garage, quality appliances, and just all-around better construction. Of course this means getting a 5 bedroom, 2 living areas, and a huge sewing room packed and moved. Anyone who has done can agree it is a terrible job, but it is done as of 2 days ago. I have had hardly any time to do anything fun, but I did get some sewing done. Here is the baby quilt for my niece’s upcoming baby.

I like the Irish Chain design. She wanted something understated, and she likes grays and whites. The white is a bright white Moda and the gray is Moda Grunge which is shot with streaks of white. I used a pale icy blue for the quilting. I am particularly proud of my binding on this one.

I also got a bit of embroidery done on some burp cloths.

We are currently living at the KOA in Salt Lake City. Remarkably quiet and pretty nice. We much prefer staying in our travel trailer to staying in a hotel, and we need to stay here until after the Hamilton show we have tickets to on Wednesday. Then it will be off to Iowa.

Oh, and we did take a trip to Kodachrome Basin State Park a couple of weeks ago. I will do a separate post for that.

House for sale

We actually we’re able to get the house up for sale, beginning last Thursday. We decided to head to Iowa to look for a house while the Open Houses and initial showings were happening. It is a real pain to try to live in a house that has half of your furniture and has to be kept super clean all the time, so leaving was a good idea. There were a number of people who came to see the house, and we have one offer so far. Expect more to arrive, and we will evaluate the offers on Wednesday. We also found a couple of houses we are interested in, but we are waiting to put offers in until the Utah house has a signed contract. We did hypertension pre-approved, so it should be relatively painless.

After four nights in hotels, I really am looking forward to getting back to my house. If I have to travel, I want to do it in my own RV!

Oh, and do you want to see a clean sewing room? It will never look this nice again. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1981-S-1500-W_Woods-Cross_UT_84087_M21701-55491#photo15

I love the stained concrete floors. They look great, and they are so easy to clean. They were a pain to add since we couldn’t stay in the house for 24 hours while they were being worked on. I think it was worth it in the end though.

Pulled the trigger

We got the proposals for buying the motorhome, and we chose to go with a bid from Sherman RV Center in Sherman, Mississippi. They are near the Tiffin factory, and the salesman we had said they have more on order now than they have ever had. It will probably be 16 weeks until we can pick up the coach though. We are instead frantically cleaning, sorting, and packing the house. We had a “stager” come in to tell us how much furniture to remove, how many books should be in the book cases, even where to place the rugs. The biggest problem is my sewing studio. Luckily she says I can keep all the machines and thread, but I have to clean up the shelves and miscellaneous stuff. Sigh.

We also pulled the trigger on a new vehicle. We decided to get a Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk. It is one of the few that can be flat towed behind the motorhome. We found a local dealer with a couple of units advertised at a good price. We went in, did a test drive, and struck a deal. Of course they didn’t want to honor the deal, but we convinced them otherwise when we got up to leave. So far I am very pleased with it. It has all kinds of safety features that are lovely. It is comfortable too, so we are going to take it back to Iowa with a load of canoes, snow thrower, lawn mower, propane bottles, and some other miscellaneous stuff. We will get a P.O. box and we have already rented a storage u it. We will also look at houses with a Realtor. We might even get lucky and make an offer contingent on getting the Utah house sold. I am crossing my fingers!

Here is a not very good picture of the Jeep. I don’t have one when it is outside since it is snowing. I love the bright red color!

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Big changes coming

For the last three weeks Kevin and I have been thinking about the timing of selling our house in Utah, buying a house in Iowa (home of most kids and all grandkids), and buying a motorhome (required for long snowbird trips because, well, Iowa). We pulled the trigger last night. The Utah house is listed for sale with the first publicity and open house on 1 March. I am sending price requests to some big Tiffin motorhome dealers for a new 37PA motorhome, and we are checking out Realtors in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It isn’t as fast as it might seem, because we had been talking about the options for over six months, but it almost takes my breath away. The house timing is good. The Salt Lake City area market is fantastic right now for sellers, with multiple offers and top dollar being common. The market in Cedar Falls is solid, not spectacular, and homes are available. Rates are probably heading up, hurting buyers and sellers, so we might as well do it now. The motorhome has a floor plan very livable for us, and we can swing the price. So, off to the real work of clean up, paint, stain, and decluttering. We have a new housekeeper candidate coming to give us a quote (I was ready to fire my old ones anyway), another one with a quote in the next few days, plus a “staging expert” today. We bought boxes, and we are already packing things like clothes and stuff we know needs to be out of the house. Luckily we have a big storage unit to put stuff in. It is still rather breath taking.

Home for the bad weather

It has been so hot at home! When I first looked at moving to the SLC area, I checked the historic temperature ranges. On average it used to get over 100 degrees four times a year. Last month we had over 10 days! It was the hottest July on record. Even worse it doesn’t get down below 70 degrees at night, and that is by 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. We have some medical and service appointments these three weeks so we can’t just head out again or I would! Even worse than the temps is the pollution. We sit in a big bowl of mountains with two million people driving lots of cars. Add to that mining and numerous petroleum refineries and we are getting a double whammy of particulate pollution and ozone. We really, really need a storm to come through and blow all this nasty air away, but it won’t be here for a few more days.

I am dealing with the heat by not using my stove or oven. If it can’t be microwaved or cooked in the Instant Pot, it doesn’t get made. We have had a few pork loin roasts and a beef pot roast, and that helps the heat. It is sad that I don’t get to leave my blinds open during the day though since I love looking at the mountains through the windows. Then again, I can’t see the mountains well due to the pollution! We decided to take a drive yesterday out to Antelope Island. Normally we get a great view to both the Lakeside Mountains to the west of the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains to the east. Yesterday we couldn’t see the Lakeside at all, and only the vaguest hint of the Wasatch. In other words, if anyone local wants to do a rain dance, please do.

Is that enough of a whine for today?