Went Shopping for a Handbag; Came Home With …

25 June 1983

We were planning to head to Las Vegas for the 4th of July weekend.  Clothes were laid out in the guest bedroom and ready to go in the suitcase.  I needed just one more thing, a hot pink handbag to match my shoes.  (Yeah, I know — what was I thinking!)

Anyway, we decided to go to the mall in Ogden to see what I could find.  Along the way we made a detour and came home with … a brand new car — an ‘83 Plymouth Reliant.

To answer the question that I know is on everyone’s mind — why the spur of the moment decision to buy a car?  Well, just days before the A/C in Mui’s ‘78 Mercury Zephyr had kicked the bucket.  We just couldn’t see ourselves driving around southern Utah and Nevada without some cool air to keep the hot temperatures at bay.

My Reliant shares the driveway with Mui’s Zephyr.

We eventually did get the A/C fixed on the Zephyr and it continued to provide years of transportation.  As did the Reliant, which transported us eight years later across the country to begin the next chapter of our life in the US.  But that’s for later.

Oh, and yeah, I did find the clutch handbag that was the reason for the shopping trip to begin with.

Day-O: An Evening with Harry Belafonte Jr.

17 June 1983

We’ve always enjoyed the rhythmic sounds of Belafonte’s music.  So, when we read in the newspaper that he’d be performing at the Special Events Center in Salt Lake City, we just had to go.

As the article below states:

And so the man who once was barred from entering the front door of a Utah hotel has returned and found waiting for him the openness that Salt Lake City can possess.

[scanned from the Salt Lake Tribune]

It was a great concert, filled with the joy of music rather than screaming fans that so often mar the experience by overpowering the performance.

Snowbird: Playing in the Snow in June

12 June 1983

Utah does not lack for ski resorts.  In fact, in the immediate Salt Lake City/Park City area there are eight of them.  There are four more in the northern part of the state, and two in southern Utah.  Some say that the powder on the ski slopes of Utah is even better than Colorado.  I’ll have to take their word for it — despite learning how to ski while living in Utah, I never became an aficionado of the sport.

Snowbird, located about 40 miles (64 km] from Kaysville, was the first ski resort we went to after moving to Utah.  We visited on a warm summer day and found plenty of snow in which to play.

[scanned from a magazine article; click for a legible version]

Located in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Snowbird offers spectacular vistas.  As the article above says:

It starts with things which only God can do—the snow, the terrain, the temperature, the scenic beauty—and here in Little Cottonwood Canyon each is present in such an ideal way that it seems a prescription for the ultimate in skiing is being uniquely filled.

Salt Lake Valley from Hidden Peak

It was a fun day … and one that we repeated on later occasions … be it spring, summer, fall, or winter.