Salt Lake City Utah, Mormon Church

The next major stop on my planned journey was Salt Lake City, Utah. I had some interest in learning more about the Mormon Church / The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS).

I had a reservation at Mountain Shadows RV Park just south of the city. It was mostly full of permanent campers, including some tiny homes, but also had transient sites, one of which I was on. It was a pull through, so easy in and out. 

There is a great public transportation system in the area, so I wasn't going to drive my truck right into town.  There were options to use a commuter train (like Go in Ontario), which had a station close to the campground, but didn't run all that frequently, or to drive a little further, to the end of the subway line and get into the city that way. I spent most of two days in the downtown area, so used each method once. 

The first day I arrived in town in time for an Organ recital in one of the newer prayer spaces. The instrument's sound was very powerful. I visited the genealogy library hoping to find the book my husband Ron Armstrong had written and published about his family history.  I was sure he had said he was sending them a copy. There were a lot of members of the church in the library available to help people with family history research. Unfortunately they were not able to find the book I was looking for in their records, which supposedly include all of their locations, including the library in Toronto, so I guess he never got around to sending them one. That was a little disappointing. I then went next door into the Mormon museum, which explained the founding of the church, the chronology of the various leaders of the church and their arrival in Utah. It was quite well done and informative. 

Admission to everything on the Temple Square is free. Members of the church are encouraged to tithe 10% of their earnings. 

At this point it was close to dinner time. The special food of the area is a burger with corned beef on it and a special dipping sauce for the french fries that generally come with the burger. I was told the best place to get it was Crown Burgers.

The restaurant was quite busy when I arrived, but it was clear they were set up to deal with the crowd. The order taker/cashier suggested that the Junior burger with fries would likely be a big enough meal for me, so that is what I ordered. I enjoyed it, though the fries could have been cooked just a little more. As you can see the special sauce for the fries is pretty much like thousand island dressing, ketchup, mayo and some relish mixed together. The reason for the crowd was because the Utah Jazz were playing that evening, the arena was nearby and I was able to get a ticket so was heading there along with everyone else.

View from my seat. Far from the front row.

Center Court, Utah Jazz.

The following day I started off by playing a round of golf at Glendale, a city run course. It was in better shape than the one I had played in Cedar City. 

I then went to the Natural History Museum of Utah on the campus of the University of Utah. It is housed in a fairly new building and covers quite a few topics, including Botany, Entomology (insects), Mineralogy and Paleontology (fossils, including Dinosaurs). It wasn't very busy, so I was able to easily move around and see everything at my own pace.

Museum Entrance

Eggs of various sizes and colours different species.

Large dinosaur replica.

After the museum I returned to the church campus (10 Acres) and had a tour of all the major buildings and grounds. The actual temple is not open to the public, but there is a scale model of it:

in one of the other buildings. Only members of the church are allowed into the temple. The part that was most surprising to me was that they have a pool supported by stone oxen, where they ceremonially provide baptism for deceased people. Members of the church can offer to perform these baptisms on a regular basis if they so choose.

The tour also included the year 2000 built LDS Convention Center, 

View from Upper Section (Not a bad seat in the house.)

View from Back of Lower Section

which is primarily used for their twice a year general conferences, the most recent one was held just a couple of weeks before my visit. The church had outgrown their other meeting spaces so built a new one, boasting 21,000 seats. 

The grounds are beautifully landscaped both the hard materials, like statues, fences and walkways and the soft ones, trees, shrubs and flowers. 

Numerous staff were busy tending to things during my visits. 

I had a real sense of safety and civility during my stay in Salt Lake City. I think it is because so many of the residents are connected to the church, giving it a larger religious influence over it than most, if not all other similarly sized American cities.