Taken for Granted?

Kim from the Great White North had a post that got me thinking.

"My point is that sometimes when things so beautiful and coveted by others are so easily accessible to us, we tend to take these things for granted."

Photo Copyright Cheyenne Rouse, Lonely Planet Images

I spent my teenage years in the dreary little town of Park City, Utah. You may have heard of it, or even seen it on TV during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. When I lived there in the mid-80's, people were shelling out between $300,000 and 1,500,000 for condos there. Condos. In the mid-freakin' 80's!

Can you imagine what that would translate into today? We lived in a 4 Bedroom, $300,000 condo in a very prestigious location. I guess that was the upside of having a lawyer for a dad. But life in actuality was: Boring as hell. Small high school (you knew everyone's name within a month), and not a lot to do unless you:

• had a car
  
• were old enough to go into a bar or club
  
• were staying at one of the hotels or resorts
  
• were a granola that liked to hike all over creation.

We were left to our own devices most of the time to make our own fun, which included (among other things):

• exploring dangerous, old mines
  
• stealing parents' Suburban and going 4-wheeling when they weren't home
  
• hiking or biking all over creation.
  
• catching a ride into Salt Lake to one of the malls or entertainment complexes.

We routinely came in contact with people who would spend several hundred dollars daily just to stay in a place we were dying to get away from. We also would occasionally come into contact with famous people, as the Annual Celebrity Classic would come into town around February.

One of my friends saw Ahnold the Guvvenator on the ski bus, then made the tactless mistake of asking him for his autograph. I was nearly knocked over in the hallway of the Holiday Inn by a then 6-year old Drew Barrymore. I could go on... but won't.

Park City could glitter and sparkle like nothing else...If you had nothing else but your money to throw at it.

I've been back to visit recently. You wouldn't recognize it for the few hundred thousand new condos built there over the past decade. It used to take us a good twenty minutes from Parley's Summit at the top of the canyon to the outskirts of Park City itself. Now, the whole thing is one continuous metro area. My little dusty dreary town is gone, except to memory.

Here is a list of other places within a few hours of my home that people literally come from all over the world to see (all links go to pages with pictures):

• Zion National Park
  
• Arches National Park
  
• Canyonlands National Park
  
• Bryce Canyon National Park
  
• Lake Powell (Page is in German or Dutch, but nice photos!)
  
• The Wasatch Mountains
  
• The Uinta Mountains
  
• Little Sahara Sand Dunes
  
• The San Rafael Swell

This list could go on and on. For a place that started out literally as one of the most God-forsaken states in the union, it is really quite the gem.

Note: By the way, I've got my own photos of most of these places; they're just sitting on the home computer right now...