House hunting trip

Yesterday we donned our camo and headed to Cedar to hunt down a house.
Of course, being married as I am to the Enterprise man, I've been educated in the benefits of putting excessive road trip miles on a rental car rather than on our own. 726 miles for this excursion. So we used our employee discount, which includes damage waiver, and I rode in comfort and security.
For the first hour, anyway.
I've whined about this before... but I reallyreally hate road trips. Sitting on my bum for hour after hour after hour... ugh. Even stopping along the roadside and getting out to play doesn't console me. Doesn't matter how good our books on CD are. I hate being trapped. Brianna thoroughly agrees with me. Though she mostly slept and snacked pleasantly enough. We stopped at the 9,114 ft summit of Indian Canyon where there were still patches of snow!






I was pleasantly surprised with Cedar City. I'd only been there once before, but it was while Brian and I were engaged so of course I can't remember anything because I was in la-la land. Cedar has all the normal retail places, plus local shops that look promising. There are tons of parks and signs for events going on.

We stayed at the Knight's Inn (get it - the Shakespearean festival - very appropriately themed). Brian and Brianna hit the pool while I took myself on a walking tour of Cedar. I went to the Parks and Rec office and the Chamber of Commerce where they gave me a big stack of brochures, maps, and info about the area. I also went by Wells Fargo and got our pre-approval for our home loan so we could go house-hunting fully armed and loaded.






I got to go running in the morning on a gorgeous trail next to Coal Creek. The river is overflowing and really muddy - it looks like light-colord chocolate milk. The trail was so beautiful, and had several paths up into higher trails. I can't wait to explore more!
On the way to and from Cedar, we stopped in Ferron, Brian's home town. His dad was there so we hung out for awhile. I really like Brian's dad. He's one of the easiest people to be around that I've ever met. Brianna found the neighbor's cat and had a great time chasing it down, saying "mao, mao, mao." She finally chased it into a tree.


















We narrowed our casa options to these two:

Both are 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage twin homes. Both have private fenced-in backyards, but the bigger home's backyard is dead - no grass, no sprinkers, just dirt and weeds. The smaller home has a cute fully landscaped backyard. It also comes with more appliances (fridge, washer and dryer!). But the big home has a slightly better location - right by Gold's gym. It's a little more expensive too. Both built in '05, so neither qualify for Utah's $6K Home Run Grant. But all the homes that did qualify weren't in great locations - they were in new subdivisions far away from the main part of the town. We looked at about a dozen listings. Brianna just loved being taken in and out of the carseat over and over all afternoon (heavy sarcasm).
I like the bigger home because it's two levels - the small one is Ranch style. But I like the smaller one because of the yard and nice tile floors. Both have great master bedrooms and big pantrys. Both look like they're in nice neighborhoods. Both are on short-sale, so this process could take longer than normal. And both would feel like heaven after living in this dumpy Vernal rental duplex for over a year!