Many of us Boomers grew up with a toy train set at home. I had to laugh when I recently sold a home for a couple hilarious senior citizens and discovered the entire basement housed a miniature train set and scenery that he built over the years with fake mountains, a town with a gas station, bank, etc. He found a guy in Denver who came over and bought/trucked the entire thing back to his home before we sold the house.

Utah is famous for a big part of train history in the U.S. In 1869 the rails from the West Coast were connected to the rails of the East Coast at Promontory Summit in what was then called Utah Territory. On May 10^th of that year a 17.6-karat golden spike was driven in as the last piece of completion that changed transportation history forever here.

Now a new luxury scenic train called the Canyon Spirit is going to be expanding its route next April to offer a three-day, daytime journey between Denver and Salt Lake City with an overnight stay in Moab and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. This new route will feature a train with custom-designed glass domed coaches so you can see the fabulous Utah and Colorado vistas and offer gourmet dining options and alcoholic drinks while you ride. It’s a ‘daylight’ service that stops each night at a hotel destination rather than have sleeper cars.  The train will slow down for a particularly scenic locations for photos. Basically, this is a unique way to see the sights, but not a fast way to travel and tourists will love it. They will allow a small number of children on the train each season, but they must be old enough to sit in their own seat as the coaches are not equipped for car seats or lap-held infants. Service animals are allowed but must be applied for to ride 60 days in advance of traveling.

This new Canyon Spirit is a morph of what was known as the Rocky Mountaineer that offered a similar route and means of travel in 2021 and will have their last ‘Rockies to the Red Rocks’ tour this week before the new service takes over next spring. But the Rocky Mountaineer has scenic train offerings in Vancouver Jasper, Kamloops, Lake Louise and Banff as well as Vancouver, Whistler and Quesnel.

This scenic tour isn’t cheap-somewhere between $2,100-$2,500 per person. Don’t panic though, as you can also take Amtrak’s California Zephyr that travels between Salt Lake City and Denver. That journey takes 15 hours and costs between $55-$190 for a one way coach seat. The further in advance you book, the cheaper the ticket. The train leaves Salt Lake City once a day and doesn’t take the same scenic route as the Canyon Spirit or have the glass domed cars but still offers scenic vistas of the West.  It originates in either Chicago or San Francisco.

I lived in a condo downtown for 20 years. I loved the ‘lock and leave’ lifestyle-I could go out of town and not worry about watering a lawn, snow removal. The building didn’t have amenities like a swimming pool, gym or movie room and the HOA fees were very reasonable. When you opt to live in a condo there will always be a monthly fee that the homeowners decide upon each year that are then usually implemented by an HOA manager. The fee will include insurance on the building (but not your personal items), a contribution to a ‘reserve’ account that could later pay for building repairs, water and sewer bills, and some buildings will include basic cable fees each month. Older buildings may have a central HVAC system and the cost to run that could also be included. Condo projects with tons of amenities will have much higher monthly fees because it costs a lot to insure a swimming pool/hot tub, tennis or pickleball courts, club rooms, etc.

That building that I lived in recently had a major plumbing issue on the floor below me that did a ton of damage in the building. Once the trouble was discovered and repair bids were had, every owner of a unit in the building was assessed a portion of the total repairs. Friends that live in one of the smaller units (about the size of large hotel room) has a $25,000 assessment fee which can be paid now or financed with payments. Larger units could face three to five times that assessment, and it can’t be passed on to a future owner/buyer. In places like Florida, which is being devastated by foreclosures of condos by Canadians not wanting to visit the U.S. anymore and by owners facing insane condo fees riddled by insurance fees that have gone up by the tens of thousands on buildings in hurricane areas.

In Utah, our legislature recognized that not everyone is happy with their HOA, and in this past session, House Bill 217 was introduced and passed, then became law in May. The bill, titled the “Home Association Amendments”, created the Office of the Homeowner’s Association Ombudsman and established new regulations for HOAs in the state which included a limit on monthly fees, requirements for board member training and a new complaint process. In addition. There are new rules as to how HOA’s can spend reinvestment fees, and controls the transfer fee which is charged by most HOA’s now when a new owner buys in a condo building. Also, the bill authorized the Department of Commerce to set and require annual registration for HOA’s, and requires them to keep 3 years of minutes. The person who will become the ombudsman has not been appointed yet, but this is a great step for condo owners and their rights and gives a source to hear complaints outside of the buildings’ HOA board.

Thinking of NOT traveling outside of the state this summer for a vaycay? Rather stick around for a staycay and maybe explore what we have here in the state to see? Utah has over 260 museums covering a wide range of topics, from art to culture, history to science. There’s a ski museum in Park City, a science museum in Provo, the mining visitor center at Rio Tinto open-pit mine, the classic car museum in Ogden and a ton of historic buildings around the state that have become museums like the Camp Floyd Stagecoach Inn located in Fairfield, the Chieftain in Sataquin and big and small museums throughout the state. The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers have over 80 satellite museums within our borders-all of which are free to visit. The largest museum and most visited is next to Red Butte Garden-the Natural History Museum, with over 163,000 sq. feet of exhibits of archaeology, botany, and paleontology.

If you drive up to the state capitol building in Salt Lake, you can currently visit the main Daughters of the Utah Pioneer museum just west of the state building and inside the capital there are many exhibits that are also free to visit. The biggest news in museums though is the upcoming ‘Museum of Utah’ which will officially become the first state history museum, celebrating our unique history, culture, and art through world class exhibits. It is currently being built directly behind the main building and will share the space with Utah legislators when completed in 2026. Most people driving by the construction at the back of the capitol building think the new addition is just for our legislature, but no, it will be shared with the museum.

The new museum with have four permanent galleries: Becoming Utah which will explore the people who have always been here, and our unique history of statehood; Inspiring Utah will highlight out state’s distinctive achievements, attractions and innovations; Connecting Utah illustrates Utah’s sense of community, character and thriving culture and Building Utah which honors the works of Utahns in its many forms-from agriculture and mining to homemaking and railroad building. All of this is being brought to the world by the Utah Historical Society, which has a massive collection of precious and unique objects and artwork from our past that will rotate through the museum over future years and can be stored there as well.

Unique artifacts the UHS owns include the Shipler Collection of photographs-considered the best and most significant photographic collection in the state, the Ellis Shipp anatomical chart which belonged to one of Utah’s first female doctors, the Carbon County Cookbook from the 1920’s, Sanborn Maps and City Directories, rare Utah films documenting things like river rafting, skiing ad parades, and digitized copies of most of the state’s various newspapers, and artifacts of textiles, housewares, farming, mining and the military.

The new museum opens in the spring of next year and will be free to the public.

Scammers and fraudsters are just a common fact of life these days. From credit card hackers to criminals who pretend to be family members, cops or IRS representatives, it seems everyone has been or is a potential victim of something nefarious crime. One of the most costly crimes can be what is known as title fraud or deed theft and we’re on high alert in the real estate industry. Almost weekly I get notices from the Washington County, Park City or Salt Lake Boards of REALTORS about someone pretending to be someone else to sell a property they don’t own. So how does this set up?

The crooks look up public records of owners of land or homes in the county. They may or may not drive by to see what it looks like but simply pretend to be the owner and call a licensed real estate agent to say something like, “I own this piece of land and need to sell it fast-I’ll sell it now for half of what it’s worth because I’m in a time crunch-can you help?” They go further by forging documents showing ownership or transfer of ownership with their name on it and forge driver’s licenses or other ID’s, so if you’re dealing with someone via text, Facetime or Zoom you don’t necessarily see the real documents when they photograph or hold up to the camera proof of their ID and ownership. The goal is that they can sell the property they don’t own fast, get the cash and not get caught before the whole thing unravels. If your property deed gets illegally transferred it could be hell getting your property back without the thief encdumbering your property with loans and liens you never were a part of as the true owner.

You may get phone calls or mail from companies wanting to sell you ‘deed insurance’. Forget that! You can sign up FREE for ‘Property Watch’ through the Tax Assessors office  that will enable you to keep track of recorded changes to your property with free alerts you can get by text or email. This allows you upon notification to take immediate action in making sure that bogus effort to own or encumber your property with a fake lien can be investigated and hopefully cleared. I’ve heard stories from escrow officers around the state of X-wives and husbands, estranged family members or even neighbors who attempt to gain what isn’t their right to own via fraud,  and some do succeed for awhile until the police and or courts get involved-which can take time and cost money. It’s standard at the close of escrow to sign a notice that wire fraud is rampant and that if a buyer or seller is asked during the transaction to transfer funds BUT to change the wire /routing number to call to verify with the title company that change or you may lose all your money in an instant, forever. Ugh.

Sometime this summer I got pulled over by Utah Highway Patrol on I-80. I wasn’t speeding and frankly, I don’t know why he pulled me over. I have a ‘fast lane’ pass and when he flipped on his lights, I was in that far left lane and so I pulled over to the extreme far left lane. The officer was mad as hell for reasons I never determined. First, he gruffly barked that I pulled into in the wrong emergency lane, and that I should have pulled to the far right lane once he turned on his lights. He said, “This lane is only for us and emergency vehicles”.  Given it was close to rush house, pulling far to the right would have taken a few miles to get over there safely. I also have a handicapped license plate and a hybrid vehicle. Basically, he had nothing to ticket me for and ordered me back into traffic, but informed me that I didn’t have a license plate on the front of my vehicle. Guess what? We’re no longer required to have a plate on the front of our vehicles, and I’m not aware of any new car that has a special place for plates anymore. The legislature killed that requirement last year!

There are a few other changes the DMV passed in 2024 to provide more efficient service that will hopefully lead to less trips in person to the DMV. First, instead of two decals for our plates, there will just be one that we will be required to place on the upper right hand corner of our license plates. Commercial vehicles can ask for two plates if they feel the need for them.  Second, the license plates will no longer have raised numbers and alphabet letters and will be flat. Supposedly the plates will look better and save production costs. Third, plates will now be mailed to us when we change them or update them. This last feature is what the DMV believes will save us all trips to their locations around the state to pick up plates.

Currently we have four standard issue plate designs as well as personalized plates, the old school black and white plates with no designs, special ‘group’ plates for folks who support certain non-profits (Boys and Girls clubs, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Farm vehicles, the Masons, Vets, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and many more), colleges here in the state, and disabled plates. Some monies from the sales of different plates goes to the non-profits they feature.  If you’re just moving to the state or getting your first vehicle in Utah, fees are pretty cheap. The standard is $7.50, personal plates are $16, group plates $21 and the new ‘blackout license plates’ are $25 with an annual fee of $25. Part of the sale of the blackout plates goes to the Utah State Historical Society.