Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City Temple

Our destination today is Salt Lake City, which we reached by about 1 PM. The KOA campground here is only about a mile from Temple Square, yet it had trees! Two sisters gave us a tour of Temple Square – one from Seattle, the other from New Zealand. I was surprised at how small the square is maybe 2 city blocks square. We visited the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with it’s huge organ (several thousand pipes). Then to the Assembly hall, built for the congregation to assemble and hear the 12 elders. The building is built on an interesting slant and while the columns appear to be marble, everything is actually painted pine. While we couldn’t go in the Temple itself, we did see how it was constructed in the 1853 to 1893 out of granite from the mountains 20 miles away. Our guides, of course, gave us some historical and religious commentary as we visited the various sites. Mary was quite good at knowing a lot of the reasons behind their faith – like why they allowed multiple wives – they arrived in Salt Lake with more women than men after the journey from Illinois. For some reason, they felt the highlight was a copy of Thorvaldsen's statue of Jesus in the visitor center with a star and planet filled background.

We still had time, so we hiked up to the Utah State Capital. It was a tough trek for Mary, but she made it. The capital building itself was somewhat of a disappointment. I guess we’ve seen too many other capitals with more historic paintings and sculptures. But I was surprised that we encountered no metal detectors to get in.