Salt Lake City

The next day after our anniversary celebration in Twin Falls, we drove six hours to land at Hill AFB in Salt Lake City. The famcamp was full due to the Utah State Fair. We parked in a sandy overflow site covered with pesky, pointed, annoying goat heads (they resemble sand burrs but are sharper and bigger). We have even had them rupture our bicycle tires. We were delighted to have our own site with full hookups the next morning without the goat heads. As soon as we moved and got set up, we headed for the fair. Our love for fairs goes all the way back to our agrarian roots in Northwest Ohio. The fair was terrific with enough junk food to raise our cholesterol levels at least 10 points. Gloria loved attending a one-hour cooking demonstration. Jerry especially liked seeing the photography exhibit and locating the winning photos. We both really liked the many exhibits, especially the art and sculpture exhibits, and the vast variety of animals. We avoided the midway but could not resist the market stands. We bought a “magical” all-in-one spot remover, cleaner, and RV sewage tank cleaner/deodorizer from a vendor who is also and RVer. Will this stuff work wonders? We’ll see!

The next morning, we visited the elaborate Temple Square, an architectural masterpiece, which took 40 years to build. The Square includes the main temple, church, information centers, and chapel for the organ recitals among other buildings. In 1857, a few days after arriving in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young allegedly had a vision from God as to how the new temple should look. He sketched his vision and employed an architect, who did not live quite long enough to see the work of his life completed in 1897. Construction of the temple encountered many backsets, but the end result is an elegant structure that is open only to Mormons. We toured both large, picturesque, Mormon Information Centers, with their multiple huge, bigger than life-sized paintings of Christ interacting with others during his ministry. We found nothing that lacked scriptural truth. There was no big emphasis on Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. Our tour guides were attractive, neatly dressed, polite young ladies; one was from Mongolia and the other from Indonesia. There was no effort to indoctrinate us to Mormonism, although our guides offered a free copy of the Book of Mormon, which we declined. At noontime, they sang a sweet Christian duet and then led us to a huge chapel with the biggest pipe organ we have ever seen. A gifted musician treated us to a fantastic organ recital. Temple Square takes up 35 acres. The carefully manicured landscaping was most colorful and is unequaled in Salt Lake. We must add that the entire tour was free and there was no effort to collect donations.

In the afternoon we drove to the Capitol, which was constructed in 1906 and sits high on a hill overlooking the city, for our second big tour of the day. Wow, what gorgeous marble and granite architecture! Inside there are huge columns and dual, identical marble stairways at each end of the first floor.
Murals adorn the ceiling surrounding the grand rotunda. We had hoped to have a guided tour, but the volunteer forgot to appear, so we did our own thing. We spoke of the beauty of the Capitol in Olympia, WA in one of our previous posts. However, we were completely blown away by the awesome, lavish Capitol of the Beehive State.