Bountiful Gets a Face-Lift

When I was a kid growing up in Bountiful, Utah, we were the only house on our street and the road dead-ended just past our driveway. There were only a few houses up on the hill near us. I was watching some old home movies a few months ago of me and the fam out flying kites in front of the house when I was little, and all you could see in the video were big fields full of weeds and forests of scrub oak where I was the proprietor of several forts. It was a very Tom Sawyer-y kind of scene, where the gullies used to fill up with rainwater and we'd build little rafts and paddle around and play flashlight tag in the forest after dark (although Tom Sawyer wouldn't have had a flashlight - maybe lantern tag?). But when I was six or seven years old they pushed the road through and then houses sprung up all over the place, paving over our little childhood paradise.

After that initially burst of development, it seemed liked time stopped in Bountiful for a couple decades. I remember coming back to Bountiful after spending two years away as a missionary in Brazil and thinking, "Nothing ever changes here." The houses, the stores, the people - nothing. So I naturally assumed that it would be the same way when I returned yesterday after a year and a half absence. But from the moment we hopped onto I-15 just above Farmington, I hardly recognized the place. First of all, I saw that the Legacy Highway is finished and in use. The Legacy Highway??!? Really?!? That thing had been stuck in development for a couple of eons while Rocky Anderson and Davis County fought it out. And what's that commuter train running along side it?? We then passed a humongous new housing development with hundreds of candy-colored little apartments. Where did that come from? Finally, we passed Lagoon amusement park, which had a few new rides out front that I didn't recognize. New rides at Lagoon?!?? Since when did they start adding new rides to Lagoon?? Isn't that a sign of the Apocalypse?

Now this isn't a "I'm sad that my things aren't the same as when I was a kid" post. It's a "I'm glad they're finally mixing it up a little bit" post. When we finally rolled into Bountiful, it looked like the whole town had gotten a long overdue face-lift. The new houses and other additions liven the place up and everything else looks a little bit fresher, a little better kept up. Heck, even the old Burger King playground in Cam Sidwell's backyard (who has since moved away) has a new color scheme.

There is one thing I forget about Bountiful when I'm away and it never changes when I come back: it's so beautiful here. Michigan is nice and green, but man, it's great to see some mountains for a change. The weather has been absolutely perfect since I got here, the grass is so green it's practically glowing, and the sunsets from our back window looking out over the valley and the Great Salt Lake are unbeatable. I hope that never changes.


P.S. - I noticed seconds before posting this that I had written "Bouniful" in the title and not "Bountiful." That's the mark of a true Bountiful native - we never say the "t".