I’d been to Utah before, but my friends were pressing me to come back for the Parade of Homes.
They said it’d blow my mind, yadda yadda…In Utah?
Yes, really in Utah.
And if you haven’t been, you need to go.
Well, after over a year of the world shutting down, I was ready to travel! So, sure, Utah worked.
What I found there, truly discovered there, was bigger, badder and more beautiful than anything I could have foreseen.
It started with The Parade of Homes.
Holy. Flippin. Moly.
The architecture knocked my socks off.
The details blew my mind.
The backdrop of mountains gave me chills.
The neighborhoods made me want to just roll around on a lawn and never leave.
(Fun fact- One home was about 20,000 square feet and had LITERALLY, a shark tank, basketball court, and basically anything else you could ever imagine in a home. I suspect there was a unicorn in a closet somewhere.)
We also took some time to show my friend around downtown Salt Lake City since this was her first visit.
We drove through the neighborhood known as the “Ivy League Streets” (they get their names from Ivy League schools of course). Each one was cooler than the next.
Seeing the homes was a treat. But the time spent with my friends, my FRIENDS who I had missed so much, the laughing I had missed so much, the travel, the new experiences we ALL have missed so much was, actually, what I really needed the most.
I could have cried with tears of joy.
The icing on the beautiful Utah cake was what happened Sunday morning. After we happened upon the yummiest, biscuit-wielding, savory restaurant in the middle of a canyon, Ruth’s Diner, we headed back to Salt Lake City to do some shopping.
Little did I know that their annual Gay Pride celebration was under way!
A massive march, rainbow flags flying everywhere, thousands and thousands of people celebrating and supporting, joyfully with open hearts and the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard chanting words of inclusion, acceptance, community and love. This time, I was really brought to tears. Never did I expect to see this in, what most people would consider, a very conservative city.
