We spent the night in Laramie. It's a very appealing town and has lots of historic, 2-story brick buildings. We were surprised to learn that Laramie has Wyoming's only university. This made the town feel very vital and active. Laramie has just over 30,000 people, and the university adds 13,000 to that.
On Tuesday, we headed out on the remainder of our drive to Salt Lake City. West of Laramie, we found more grasslands. We saw several prairie dog areas and spotted an alert coyote strolling.
Soon, however, the grasslands gave over to sagebrush and scrub. No longer were there cattle grazing or any visible signs of habitation. The views were vast, but rather flat and colorless. We saw lots of wind turbines, snow fencing, and oil refineries. And we drove past the famous Little America, where Jerry can remember stopping for 5-cent ice cream cones as his family traveled to Kansas to visit relatives, many decades ago. (The cones are now 50 cents.)
Suddenly, we hit the Wasatch Range, and we were amid pretty hills with trees and the first blushes of fall color. The highway curved its way through the hills, passing Park City with its myriad condos and ski town amenities. The change in topography and the comparatively lush plant life was very welcome for these native Northwest folks.
We then wound our way down into Salt Lake City--our first good-sized city in over 2 weeks. The weather was perfection. Sunny and warm--so welcome after the cold temps we'd been having for the past week.
After we got settled into our room, we hustled down to the lobby, where they were having their late afternoon wine event--not so much for the wine, but because they were offering free chair massages. What a nice way to unkink our necks and backs after two long days in the car. Then we set off to get a taste of this city that we've flown through a number of times but never visited. Our hotel was just 2 blocks from Temple Square, so we went to explore. The light was pretty and showed off the interesting architecture in the square. (Top: the Temple; Bottom: Assembly Hall)
We came back to our hotel through City Creek Center, a mall which is across the street from the south entrance to Temple Square and is full of water features--including a "performing" fountain that's quite captivating--and lots of plantings. The mall was built by the church at a cost of $2 billion in cash, we were told.
Jerry had mentioned that we were celebrating our 45th anniversary while I was getting us checked into our hotel. Our front desk person, Kendall, was so excited. She upgraded us to a deluxe king room and said they'd send us a bottle of wine. When we returned from our wandering, we found not only the promised wine, but a cheese board with 4 local cheeses, grilled bread, salami, and olives. This was accompanied by a cute card the staff had put together, with hearts and wedding rings drawn on it and signed by five of them. What a nice Idea. And they weren't done yet with their special touches. When we arrived at the hotel restaurant for dinner, the maitre d' wished us happy anniversary as he seated us and handed us our menus--which had been printed with our names and a notation about us celebrating our 45th anniversary. At the end of the meal they brought us a dessert of our choosing. We left the restaurant feeling very feted indeed.
The next morning, we went back to visit Temple Square more thoroughly. Our first order of business was to take a tour of the Beehive House, Brigham Young's home. We also visited the beautiful Assembly Hall. We finished that just in time to take in the daily organ recital in the famous Tabernacle. There is a different program and organist each day. Quite fabulous. The organist made a point of playing pieces that show off the range of the huge organ. I swear I felt some of the lower register bits reverberating off my ribs and spine!
The Beehive House:
The Temple:
The Tabernacle organ:
After lunch--10 stories up and overlooking the oft-photographed Temple--we went to visit the Family History Center. A local friend had mentioned that it was a friendly place to visit, and I have several friends who have made pilgrimages to this fount of all things genealogical. So we decided to give it a try. There were dozens of volunteers to help us get started. A nice woman sat with Jerry and me at two computers, helping each of us do a little impromptu family research. It was great fun, and we both learned things we didn't know about our family members.
A bird's eye view of the Temple:
The lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, the building in which our 10th story restaurant resided:
The beehive symbol is everywhere--from newel posts to carpets to State Hwy. signs. It's meant to symbolize being industrious and the concept of working together. I doubt I'll ever forget that Utah is the Beehive State.
Our former interim pastor, Scott Dalgarno, is now the head of staff at Wasatch Presbyterian in SLC. We had arranged before we left on our trip to meet up if possible. In between meetings, Scott was able to join us for a quick dinner. It was great to catch up and hear stories of his time in SLC. It was a perfect warm late afternoon, and we were able to sit out on a lovely patio and enjoy the nice weather.
We're glad we stopped to see this city. It was a nice break from our journey across the Plains, and we got to see some things we've long heard about.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment