Salt Lake City

So today we got up fairly early and headed into Salt Lake City. We managed to find parking right down town in Temple Square. This area has a convention centre, history museum, family genealogy centre, tabernacle and the main temple. Unfortunately they are rejuvenating the temple so the entire thing was covered in scaffolding and you couldn’t see anything, so instead I found this statue in the gift shop so here it is.

We did see some actual temples but we were driving and didn’t take any pictures. They are pretty spectacular.  We were told in the museum that there are over 200 temple world wide and recently they have been building much smaller temples so that they can build more and closer to smaller communities so people don’t have to travel as far.  

We were going to tour the convention centre but we just couldn’t coordinate the tour time. Instead we got an impromptu tour of their auditorium, it was three levels and holds 21,000 people. It was pretty amazing, all the seat are focused on the podium at the front where the president is.  The acoustic were very good, I could just imagine seeing a concert here. 

The next thing we did was check out the family genealogy room and I signed up on familysearch.org. It is a free program to help you work on your family tree. You put your information in and with deceased people you will connect with other people on the site. I started off with Len and I and then I put my parents info in and because mom has passed it hooked up with all her parents info and up my great, great grandparents. I have an account now and I will play around with it. Hopefully I can get a bunch done on both sides.

We then went to the museum and again they have done an excellent job with the museum. We all learned how the Mormon religion was founded. We also found out the struggles and triumphs they have had over the years. The display, movies and docents were very informative and easy to follow.  Overall I would highly recommend checking out this area if you are in Salt Lake. We only spent the morning but easily could have spent all day.  

The trip to Vegas was pretty windy, with wind gusts up to 45 miles an hour, had to have both hands on the wheel the whole time.  Once we got down to St George the terrain changed to bright red rock mixed into the mountains and hillsides. It is very striking.

Coming into Vegas we saw the new football arena and a few new casinos, we got to the condo, got checked in and then went out to get some supper and few necessities. We went to Cappriotti’s sandwich place.  They make the best subs. I had their signature sub which is the Bobby, it is roasted Turkey that is shredded , mixed with mayo and spices, stuffing and cranberry sauce. It is like eating Boxing Day leftovers, it is so good but I didn’t remember to get a picture before I finished it. After supper we went for a hot tub and now it is time for bed.  We have to get up early to go to a timeshare meeting and then off to explore Vegas tomorrow, we are going to try and not do a lot of driving as the last two days has been enough.