Exploring Salt Lake City

Katie and I wanted to head out pretty early the next day (remember, that house was really awkward!).  So we got up, packed, and left.  Our first stop was for Starbucks.  We wanted a bit of civilization, and Katie wasn't able to connect to the wireless last night, so she was looking forward to having internet.

After breakfast we headed off for our day of exploring.  First stop: Temple Square.  This is where the Salt Lake Mormon Temple is located.  Katie and I were kind of nervous about visiting.  Neither of us are Mormon and we weren't planning on converting.  So we were a little wary of any of the women who worked there.  But it turns out they were just super nice, willing to answer any questions, but also happy to back off and give us some space.  The area was very pretty, although the temple was much smaller than I expected.  We took some photos of the outside, looked at the exhibits inside, and left for our next destination.

Next up: This is the Place Heritage Park.  The concept is like Williamsburg but for pioneers.  It was interesting, but not quite as well done.  The most annoying part was today was field trip day for some local school, so there were oodles of kids running around.  This wouldn't have been too much of a problem, except they were in all the buildings taking up space.  (I can't help but think of the Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon says a crowd is any group that can stampede him "30 adults or 70 children.")  But the exhibits we could see were interesting.  And the area was pleasant with lots of garden areas and cute houses.  Katie was particularly smitten with one of the stone houses and we did a fair amount of  window looking to see the inside.

As we walked around I couldn't help thinking of the pioneers who made the trek across America way back when.  They had little carts or covered wagons.  They left everything behind and probably didn't keep in touch with the people they were leaving.  I'm moving across county too, but in a car, on roads, with internet.

Cloud looks like a speed demon next to this.

When we were done looking around the pioneer area we decided it was time for lunch.  Both of us were getting sick of "American" food, so we opted for Vietnamese.  I've been having a soup craving (soup is probably a top 3 food for me), so I had Pho - yum!  Finally it was time to check into the hotel and drop off bags and things.  This proved a bit complicated because they seemed to have lost the reservation I made yesterday evening.  But there was space for us, so no problem.  We had some time to relax (yesterday was a bit stressful with the bugs and the awkward house) , catch up on blogs, download photos, and get ourselves ready for the next part of the day.

Katie was interested checking out some night life in Salt Lake City.  This proved to be difficult to find (or at least it was not well advertised online).  So we opted to... go back to Temple Square (we are wild ones).  We had some questions about Mormonism and were interested in the official tour of the area.  Since the tour guides had not been pushy before, we went back.  It was quite interesting, most of the stuff I already knew, but they cleared up some misunderstandings I had, and gave some new info.  After the tour we went to the conference center across the street.  The main room holds 21,000 people.  It was crazy enormous.  But I was more interested in the roof.  The whole thing (4.5 acres) was made into a park!  Very pretty, very cool, very big.

Then we headed out for dinner.  This actually proved to be an event because the city seems to shut down for the evening.  Most restaurants are just for breakfast and lunch, so dinner was a bit of a problem.  My theory is it comes from the Mormon's emphasis on family and so everyone is at home having family dinner, but we're really not sure.  Eventually we found food (and the wander to get it was fun too), ate and went back to the hotel.  We had an early night (to help make up for our early morning).