Grettings From Mormonville

Salt Lake City

Before I forget: Driving through Indiana we ran across a series of signs by a gun-loving organization called gunssavelives.com. A sample: Another crook is sadder but wiser. My grandma kept the gun beside her.

We spent all day in Salt Lake City exploring. We took a tour of the state capital and spent a lot of time in Temple Square, the downtown area that contains the Mormon Temple, the tabernacle, the administrative offices, and numerous other buildings. In fact, without the Mormon stuff, SLC would almost have nothing but shopping and restaurants. The Mormon presence is rather overwhelming, but in a nice way. The city is beautiful: clean, neat, friendly, covered with flowers, manicured lawns, etc. We arrived in Temple Square about 9AM, and there must have been 50 gardeners hard at work cleaning the pools, clipping grass, edging walkways, sweeping up dead flower petals, and otherwise making the place beautiful. It's like an elaborate, very expensive theme park. 

Temple Square has two over-the-top visitor centers, one focuses on the regular Christian Bible, the other on Mormonism. We explored getting a tour of the Mormon one, but politely declined the tour when it looked like there might be a little religious instruction involved. We easily did a tour by ourselves.

The state capital was interesting. We and a couple of other people were getting a tour of the almost-empty building from a docent when at least 100 Chinese tourists arrived, all taking pictures on their ipads. The guide said the Chinese make up the largest percentage of tourists in SLC.

Then we stopped in City Creek Mall, a beautiful shopping area in the middle of downtown. It's an inside and outside mall with a stream running through it and an enclosed walkway linking the upper level stores. Nice stores: Nordstrom's, Macy's, Tiffany, Coach, etc. Clearly, Mormons are not giving all their money to the church.

Since Mormons are not allowed to drink alcohol, we were surprised by the number of bars in town. Apparently, in order to get to host the 2002(?) Olympics, SLC had to agree to grant more liquor licenses. They never went away, of course, and they seem to be thriving.

One of the best stops of our day was a visit to the Salt Lake City Public Library, one of SLC's greatest architectural highlights. Partly surrounding the six-story library is a curving wall, at the base of which are nice shops, and a radio station. I can't do it justice. Check it out on line if you want to know more.

Finally, dinner at a Himalayan restaurant, and then back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, a visit to Antelope Island State Park, located in the Great Salt lake, and then on to Zion National Park.