For Rent

We took our annual trip to Bear Lake, where aunt's, uncles, cousins, grandma & grandpa (on Mark's side) all squeeze into 2 condos for a 3-day boating/playing/beach-chair-sitting/eating fest. It was great; I always miss those who weren't there. It has been at least 3 years since we all were there together, but with Weston kids being so spread out now, I am impressed with those who make the long haul to Bear Lake, especially since I complain about 7 hours in the car (I hate car trips). I don't have any pics because I forgot to pull my camera out of my bag. Oh well.

On the way home, we dropped off Rachel (sister-in-law Rachel, not sister Rachel) and were able to visit her & Paul's apartment. Such a cute apartment, and so much nicer than anything Mark and I rented. It made me a little nostalgic for that 'first married apartment' thing. You can't recreate those years.

I remember looking for a place to live-- we really didn't have any specific location in mind since we weren't limited by jobs. I was still in school and Mark traveled all over the valley for framing jobs, but we still seemed to gravitate to the Avenues (just east of downtown Salt Lake City). I guess it must have seemed 'young' and somewhat 'hip' and there were lots of other newly marrieds living in the area, attending the U of U. Even back then, style mattered, because we picked our first apartment by driving around and finding something that looked good. Not price, not size.

This is what we found:

There wasn't a FOR RENT sign posted anywhere, but we liked the building so much, we knocked on one of the doors and asked if there were any apartments available. Of course they're weren't, so we left and continued to half-heartedly look for the next couple weeks. We found something depressing and ugly, but were resigned to take it. Then- we received a call out of the blue. The people whose door we knocked were moving unexpectantly and wanted to know if we were still interested in the apartment-- we would be doing them a favor because they needed to move out before their lease was up. And so we did.

(The green door with the stairs was the back entrance to our apartment, but we used it as the main door)

The apartment was pretty big-- the building was most likely an old polygamist house that had been separated into apartments. There was no air conditioning, dishwasher, or garbage disposal, but I had a huge kitchen and as mentioned before, the pad had style. We were situated right at the base of 3rd Avenue, at the opening of Memory Grove park. This was the view right outside our door:


The only real annoying thing about living there were the horse-drawn carriages that would clomp-clomp through the park and past our door into the late hours of the night. But the park was beautiful and since I did not have a car, I spent a lot of time walking the 1 block into the city. I had temp jobs all that summer and I would walk to all of them--even as far as 900 south and State. Guess I was used to hiking it since I was still a college student. I would walk to the temple. I would walk to the mall. I would walk to the grocery store. Mark worked pretty late hours (came home around 7pm), so I just had to make due. I don't remember it bothering me at all-- in fact, I remember wanting to 'go walking' to exercise. What??? Wasn't I hoofing it enough? Even when I started back up at school, I would walk to the bus stop in front of ZCMI mall (pretty interesting crowd there at 6 in the morning) and catch the shuttle bus to Provo.

Living in the city was a cool experience. When I drove though the area last year, it made me sad that I felt so removed from it all. I have been completely suburbanized and have left my uber-urban-chick persona behind. Hello PTA mom. I'm pretty happy, however, with my current digs and neighborhood, so no complaints here. I can't recreate those years, but it sure is mushy, misty trip to remember them.