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.

Here’s why one of Utah’s most popular brewpubs is expanding to the west side
BUSINESS • SQUATTERS CORNER PUB
By KOLBIE PETERSON | The Salt Lake Tribune
People who live on the west side of Salt Lake County now have a brewpub close by, in a majority-minority city that is Utah’s second most populous.
Squatters Corner Pub, at 3555 S. Constitution Blvd. in West Valley City, opened to the public Monday and was scheduled to hold a ribbon-cutting Tuesday.
The brewpub, located in the northwest corner of the Valley Fair Mall complex, was previously a TGI Fridays and had sat vacant for years.
Rick Seven, brand and marketing manager for Salt Lake Brewing Co. — which owns Squatters Corner Pub and Squatters Pub Brewery downtown, along with six other restaurants and two breweries — said West Valley City is underserved when it comes to brewpubs.
“There’s really no brewpubs or breweries west of I-215,” Seven said. “Everything seems to be downtown, and in that south corridor off of [Interstate 15], and a little bit on the east side, but nothing out west. So we thought this was an ideal location.” Technically, Uinta Brewing Company is just west of the interstate.
Seven said the spot is ideal for Squatters, since there are residential areas, government buildings and local businesses nearby, as well as a hotel and the Maverik Center. TRAX also runs along Constitution Boulevard, and West Valley Central Station is across the street.
Salt Lake Brewing Co. considered expanding into Lehi, in the Silicon Slopes area, Seven said, but the company purposefully chose West Valley City for its population size and diversity.
In addition to welcoming West Valley City dwellers, Squatters Corner Pub will also serve the people of Tooele, Taylorsville, South Salt Lake and West Jordan, he said.
Squatters Corner Pub has a restaurant license, not a bar license, which means families will be able to bring their kids inside certain areas. The brewpub will also have a patio and a small retail section.
In the bar section of the brewpub, complete with large TVs, there is a large board that displays which beers are being poured. It features beers from Salt Lake Brewing Co. Brewery, next door to Squatters, and Top of Main Brewery in Park City, with locally tied varieties like the Dog Lake pale ale, and the Swede Alley nitro stout. One tap, called the Brewer’s Batch, will be reserved for Squatters beers.
Seven said the food menu at Squatters Corner Pub will be nearly identical to the menu at Squatters downtown, featuring appetizers, pub favorites, soups, salads, burgers, pizza, sandwiches and the Thai yellow curry, which has been on the menu since 1989.

Well, this is something I never expected. Clients and potential customers are calling me to sell their homes. That’s not unusual, but the WHY is unusual and disturbing. They are calling me because they are leaving Utah due to the anti-trans laws our phobic legislature has passed and they simply don’t feel they and or their children will be treated fairly or potentially not be able to receive future health care here that addresses their needs.
There’s the ‘Final Pre-Election 2024 Anti-Trans Risk Assessment Map (Google it) which came out this year and was updated before we all voted for President last week. It shows which states have a DO NOT TRAVEL warning (Texas, with Florida a close second) and which states may be safer. If you go to the map at the www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2024 you can click on each state and it will show you the legislative bills there that have passed and were defeated and will be updated as bills are written for future legislation in 2025 around the country. You may not have heard or seen any anti-trans ads here in Utah because national politicians don’t spend much money on ads here as we’re a ‘given Red State’ but across the U.S. anti-trans ads were a major part of many campaigns.
If you click on Utah on the website you’ll see there are ten bills the ACLU followed in Utah that passed into law or were defeated, including public accommodation bans, school facilities bans, etc. It’s a real fear of parents around the country and in Utah that their Transkids might be taken from them or that our legislators will meet this January and pass laws to force Transkids and people into medical detransition, ban the use of anything but dead names, and disallow gender to be changed in legal documents. Cities and towns can pass the same kind of laws, like Odessa, Texas that became the first city in the nation to pass a $10,000 bounty on transgender people inside bathrooms.
The rise of anti-trans bills around this country is astounding and sadly the fear mongers will submit more laws next year to restrict gender-affirming healthcare for trans and gender-expansive people this year with most of the bills targeted against children under the age of 18. Dr. Diana Finkel at Rutgers University Medical School noted, “If you, as the parent of a 16-year-old, want your child to have breast augmentation because she wants a larger bosom and she is a cisgender girl, she can do it” but noted that the law would ban a trans girl from having the same surgery.
Given we don’t know the outcome for sure with last week’s election but certainly the creation of anti-trans laws and their enforcement will continue despite what so many medical professionals and their research have found… that touting the mental and physical health benefits of gender-affirming care is good for children and adults seeking to transition.