The Wagon Train Finds Paradise in Utah

After traveling for 10 months and visiting 32 states, we've decided to settle down in Salt Lake City. SLC was on the top of our list and as we visited each state and each city we consider them as possible places to live. But nothing compared to Salt Lake City for what we wanted for our family. If you're interested and haven't heard us say it, the following was our list of criteria for choosing our new home. In no particular order we prioritized the following things: recreational lifestyle (if the majority of the population isn't wearing jeans and fleeces, and obsessed with the outside, we weren't interested), mountains, a big city (but not too big), sunshine (SLC is statistically has more sunny days than San Diego), no biting bugs, Wholefoods and an Apple Store (not just based on the availability of those two fine establishments, but based on the criteria each of those corporations uses to choose locations, which is a formula based on demographics, socioeconomic, and population), closeness to cool stuff (Moab, Vegas, California, Seattle, Portland), four seasons, health conscious living culture, and an international airport. Last month we bought a house, chose a school, and joined a rec center, it all feels a little strange but fun.

For your information, we choose a house that would nicely accommodate guests, the entire basement has a "guest quarters". The snowboarding is amazing, I actually went yesterday May 27th.

Our house, click here

See house on map, click here (it is located about 200 feet from a mountain bike trail into a national forest)

We are still living in our RV and don't move into our new house until June 20th. We plan on renovating most of it, not big stuff but all surfaces including painting, and flooring. It's going to be fun updating it to fit us. So far it's a little surreal being in Salt Lake City, we've had a bunch of trips over the last couple of months, so we don't by any means feel settled but I think the family consensus is, we aren't ready to end the trip. It will be a very sad day.

Our plan is to move into our house the end of June, then sell the RV shortly there after. I was a little worried about selling the rig with the high gas prices but the prices of RV's seem to be holding.

We had to pull over entering Utah, we thought the "Life Elevated" was a perfect tagline, see RV parked in the distance.

We took a weekend away at a local State Park. 80% of Utah is parks.

In the middle of a 3 hour hike.

This isn't what it looks like. When I look back at these pictures, it seems like Daddy looked over the 200 foot drop edge, then allowed his daughter to do the same thing. Oh, wait, that is exactly what happened. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I didn't know my wife was filming.

Buddies, goofing around.

Taylor with Auntie Beth, a Salt Lake City resident.

Campbells celebrated his 5th birthday last month. He had a bowling party, complete with a bowling lane cake made by Rosie Grandma. Our friends Beth and her husband Paolo were in attendance. A very fun day.