Parade of Homes

This week we took a trip to St George go attend the Parade of Homes. Three years ago we were passing through St George at the time of the Parade of Homes and tried to see them all in one day. this year we took more time. We traveled on Monday, saw the homes on Tuesday and Wednesday then returned home on Thursday.

We decided to stay at the Inn on the Cliff, which gave us a nice view of St George.

St George from the cliff

Our night view with the temple

 There were 28 homes to visit, nine of which cost more than $1,000,000. All but one were way out of our price range. We learned that to build a $1,000,000 home needs a lot of space which must be filled with a lot of excess features that are not very efficient. What you get, however, is a $1,000,000 view. Here are some of the views:

$1,700,000

$2,995,000

$1,100,000

$1,449,900

$1,950,000

$1,480,000

$1,148,000

$1,350,000

$1,299,900

Actually you can get some good views for less money.

$360,000

$354,000

 And my favorite

$775,000

We decided to pick features we especially liked from the various houses.

Best front porch

Diane really likes wrap around porches like this one.

Best courtyard feature

Best courtyard

Diane really liked this boxwood planter in the entrance of the house. I liked the private courtyard surrounded by walls of the house. Actually I would like a hacienda style of house where all of the rooms enter into a courtyard. We stayed in a B&B like that in Albuquerque one year.

Best music room

We kept looking for rooms to accommodate the piano and organ. In most of the houses they would need to fit in the Great Room. This house (the one with the nice porch) had a room that had an entrance from the porch and from the main house.

Best office

We are looking for a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house so one of the rooms can be used as an office/library. There were several possibilities, but we kind of like this room.

Best kitchen

Most of the houses had nice kitchens as part of the Great room. One feature we found interesting was the pantries. Many were very large and some were hidden.

Pantry hidden behind a secret door

There were not a lot of houses with food storage areas.

Best Great Room

Diane likes the fireplace with room on each side for books. Of course the piano may have to go there if there is no separate music room.

How can you beat a great Room like this?

I like a lot of light in each of the rooms.

Best dining room

There is a lot of light and an entrance onto the patio.

Best master bedroom

There is a lot of light and an entrance onto the patio.

Best master bathroom

The interesting feature is a tub in front of windows which gives a nice view (as long as there is privacy from neighbors).

Many of the extra bedrooms had their own bathrooms (or a Jack & Jill bathroom shared by two bedrooms). Some of the houses included a "Casita" which not only had its own bathroom, but included a refrigerator and a microwave. 

Casita

One of the Casitas didn't have a closet. The explanation was to prevent the guests from staying too long.

Best Laundry/Crafts room

Diane wants a nice laundry room as well as a crafts room. Some of the laundry rooms can serve for both functions. Otherwise they can be separate rooms.

Best crafts room

Best laundry

The out of door features are also nice. Of course the high-priced houses had extravagant outdoor spaces. For our tastes, simplicity is best. 

Best patio

This was a simple covered patio.

Best pool

There were a lot of fancy pools, but this one with a simple hot tub and a small pool looked inviting.

As mentioned, a lot of the big homes have to have special-function rooms to fill in the space. Here are some of them:

Children's bedroom

This room has four beds on one side of the room and four more like them on the opposite side - space for 9 children (yes, there was a crib in the room).

Control room 

The houses were well automated.

Man's cave

This room was adjacent to the "toy garage" for all the "man's things". As one woman was about to enter the "man's cave" I said, "You can't go in there, it's for men only." She laughed.

Cinema

They didn't have a list of show times.

Children's playhouse

This is a two-story home with a slide between floors.

Museum

There were several rooms full of trophies from the owner's hunting expeditions.

We found a house for sale (not on the Parade of Homes) close to our hotel which had a fantastic view of St George and a very open feeling with lots of windows - tempting, except it is on two levels.

A house for sale

Kitchen with a view

View from the balcony 

We enjoyed the Parade of Homes, but we especially enjoyed our visit with Nathan and Stephanie. We went out to eat at Costa Vida then went to see their new home.

Nathan, Stephanie, Amelia, and Phoebe at the Costa Vida

Phoebe taking pictures with Stephanie's iPhone

We were going to take our time returning to Logan, but just before we left for St George the ECE Department asked me to attend the Engineering Week award ceremony on Friday afternoon. It's a good thing we returned when we did. It snowed all through Utah on Wednesday night (roads were clear during our travel, but there was snow all along the way). Friday was even worse so we would have had problems with the weather.

At the ceremony I received the Distinguished Service Award for the department. It was an honor, but I thought they said Extinguished Service Award, which may fit better. 

My award