Salt Lake City

Today we had a lot of stops mapped out and decided to head off to the University of Utah area which has a few things we wanted to see. First on the list was the Utah Museum of Fine Arts which we thought was having a Picasso and Monet exhibit. Once we arrived we discovered that the Picasso and Monet exhibit was last summer. I guess we were reading some outdated material!

We all seemed to enjoy the Native American art the most. There were some incredibly intricate pieces there all in great shape. Native Americans were great at crafts!


After the museum we headed off to the Red Butte Garden & Arboretum. This is also located on the University of Utah campus. It was surprising how new all of the buildings at the university looked. It seemed as if the campus was built last year! Some of the buildings like the arena were built for the 2002 Olympics that were hosted in Salt Lake.

The garden went above and beyond our expectations and claims to be the largest botanical garden in the Great Basin. It encompasses over 75 acres. Needless to say we did not walk around the entire area!

The garden was broken into different areas such as herbs, medicinal, roses, floral, woodlands, etc. The ground was so immaculately cared for and was a pleasure to walk around, even in 90 degree heat.

The only letdown was that we did not get to see any rattlesnakes. As this is rattlesnake area, we were hoping pass by one, but even if they saw us, we didn't see them!


The flowers they had in the gardens were beautiful, and I'm sure that no picture can show it well enough. However, we have to try, right? :-) The garden is also perched up in the mountains, as is the entire U of U campus. It has beautiful views overlooking the entire city with snow-capped mountains in the background. Except for the extreme weather, it would be a great place to go to college.

The next stop took us to Trolley Square. The write-ups touted it as a great remodeled area that used to house trolleys. We were under the impression that it would show some of the historic buildings and possibly some of the historic trolleys. However, it didn't. Although it was a nice area, it was basically a mall laid out in a few blocks of the city. Once again, everything seemed new and nice, but we didn't have to drive so far to see a mall!

After a quick late lunch at Whole Foods, we headed to the Utah state capital. We must confess that none of us knew who the governor of Utah was. After all, remembering the governor of California is so easy with Arnold at charge, but Utah? Well, it turns out that the governor of Utah is Jon Huntsman. The capital building is very impressive, but the heat was pretty overwhelming. It resembles most state capital buildings, but is still fun to see.

Inside the building which is much cooler (temperature wise), there are really nice views. The dome below is one of them, as well as many of the marble stairways and architecture through the entire building.


The capital is also perched on top of a hill and provides another great view of the city. All in all, the city was so clean, easy to get around, had so little traffic, almost no homeless (that we saw), great restaurants, as well as many cultural activities. I'd rate it pretty high on the list of good places to live, with the exception of this heat during the summer time.

Before dinner, we went back to Temple Square to take the tour given by Mormon missionaries. Since there was no one else waiting for a tour, we had our own private tour with two missionaries. One of them was from Korea, and the other was from Texas, both of whom spend 18 months here in Salt Lake educating tourists on the Mormon religion. I must say that I was really impressed with their knowledge, as well as how nice they were. I'm not a big believer in religion, but these people look very happy and are so nice.

We learned some interesting facts about the old and new testament, as well as information about the Mormon temple here in Salt Lake. A few of the questions that we got answered included:

• Mormons do allow non-Mormons into their temples. Whenever a new temple is built, the first two months are open to the public. After that they close them off and it is no longer available unless you are Mormon.
• The statues around the Temple Square area are not eagles, they are seagulls. When the Mormons first came to Salt Lake, they had a tough time farming. One of the problems was with locusts eating all of their crops. They prayed and prayed, and seagulls appeared from the West and ate all of the locusts.
• Why are there only women missionaries here in Salt Lake? You never see a man here giving tours or answering questions. And there are tons of missionaries all around Temple Square. The reason; Women are nicer. At least this is the reason we were told by our two tour-guides. Made sense to us.

As I said, I'm not a big believer in religion, but it's nice to see such sincere people who have a passion and want to help others. Hats off to them.

After our tour, we stopped off at The Gateway for dinner and had another good meal. This time we chose to eat at Z'Tejas which serves southwestern food. The cornbread, which is made every thirty minutes, was better than our sourdough bread!

Tomorrow we are taking a leisurely ride to Idaho Falls, Idaho. We were planning on going out to the Timpanogos Caves, but after reading a lot of reviews on the web, we are opting to go to the caves near Mt. Rushmore instead. This means we no longer have to wake up early in the morning! As I'm typing this it seems that rain is coming. According to the forecasts we are going to hit some rain over the next four or five days. I still think that Yellowstone will be beautiful, even if it's wet!

Hotel: Hilton Garden Inn - We rate these hotels a 10. Breakfast is free. Wi-fi is free. Rooms are nice, clean, and big. It is a walk to the free light-rail that runs downtown. If you want to go to the Temple area, you must drive or take the light-rail (5 minute ride).