Tag: Utah

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?

Pictures from the Black Hills trip

Our travel trailer and the view at Lucerne.
View off our campsite at Lucerne campground in Flaming Gorge near Manila, UT
We had a number of unfazed pronghorn that kept wandering through the campground to the lake.
Oh, and there was a family of ospreys at the edge of the campground. We never saw the babies, but the adults flew back and forth with food.

I tried to insert a sound file from Boulder Creek, but I can’t figure it out. Sorry!

Devil’s Tower from the KOA campground
Cabin near Spearfish views
Bunkhouse near Spearfish
A mandatory view of Mount Rushmore from the highway (with the truck antenna right through Jefferson’s face)
Another view of the Needles Highway
Even in the rain I think this shows why the hills were called “Black”
One of the wonderful tunnels on the Needles Highway, in the rain from inside the car.
Pactola Lake in the Black Hills has some amazing rocks around and in it.

On the road again

It has been HOT in Salt Lake City! It has been over 90 degrees, and sometimes higher the last few days. That is 10-15 degrees warmer than normal, and I have been dying. We finally got on the road today, heading in a very slow manner to Spearfish, SD and a family get together. We have so much stuff the truck is filled to capacity. We brought our Pack and Play for the youngest grandson to use plus some bouncer toy thing that my daughter originally intended to rent. I was able to buy a used one on KSL classifieds for less than the rental would have been! Add to that a few goodies for the grandkids, birthday presents for oldest son and his wife, my sewing machine and some goodies there, and it is a lot of stuff.

We originally intended on going to Fossil Buttes National Monument, but it was just too hot to enjoy walking around so we just went straight to our campsite at Lucerne campground on Flaming Gorge Reservoir. We don’t normally make reservations in advance except for destinations, but Kevin decided to make this reservation a couple of days ago, and I am glad. We got a site that looks over an arm of the lake and has lots of space between us and the neighbor.

The view from my door is pretty nice.

Nothing between us and the water except a meadow. This site also has electricity, a definite plus though we didn’t need AC today. The cost was $18 plus the $10 resevation fee, so it wasn’t too bad. The Senior Pass we have discounts the basic camping, but the electricity is provided by a concessionaire so that isn’t discounted.

We did have some visitors. Can you see the two pronghorn? These two (or their friends) wandered through three times that I noticed.

They walk within 30 feet of the trailer.
You can tell they aren’t afraid of campers.

There is even an osprey nest right at the edge of the campground.

Osprey nest just outside the campground.

This is one of the nicest evenings we have had in a long while. We sat outside enjoying the view, then I roasted some carrots and potatoes. We ate those with some brisket we brought from home. Ahhh. The campground is very quiet except for insects and the occasional bird – just the way I like it.

Home (and getting there)

After a nice Brueger’s bagel, we headed from Tucson to Payson, AZ and Houston Mesa campground. It is a Forest Service campground run by a concessionaire just north of the town and set in the pine trees. It is just gorgeous, and there were only a couple of other campers. The camp hosts were very nice, and obviously rather bored with the limited number of campers. They talked to us quite a while, and were helpful in identifying places to go. The only problem with the big pull through site was the road noise; there was a lot of it!

We ended up just spending the night and decided to head to Utah. We drove through a wonderful scenic area with a huge copper mine. I live in the town with the Kennicott mine, the biggest open pit copper mine in the world, and I was still impressed with this one. Oddly the tailings were very colorful and interesting – all the shades of tan, brown, gray, along with green and pinks.

We spent our last night on the road at the Beaver KOA. Nice folks and only one other campsite occupied. It is a nice little place, very well kept and far enough off the highway to be very quiet. We took our time leaving, making sure the tanks were clean and empty before heading home. I even dusted! I still need to sweep the floor and wash the rugs, but it was pretty clean as we pulled it in the side yard. We started laundry (a never ending task) and cleaned out the refrigerator. Now the trailer will sleep for a few weeks.

We aren’t making any plans for April until we find out what is up with Kevin’s knee. It is very painful and makes these weird popping noises. He had this rather silly idea that he could wait until he went on Medicare in September, but it is just too sore. He saw our family practitioner today, and he has a MRI scheduled for Friday. By mid next week we will hopefully know what he has to do to be better since the PT and meds aren’t working. I am hoping it is a quick arthroscopic clean up of the tendon, but that is not based on any specific knowledge. If he can get better quickly, we may go to a high school get together in Oklahoma City on Easter weekend. If not, we will stay here (or at least close) until mid May when we have reservations for the Yosemite area.