Zion Hears the Watchmen's Voices!

Daily Mileage=300; Trip Total=3764

Today's blog title is pretty religious, wouldn't you say? Well, we're in Salt Lake City and spent a couple of hours touring the Mormon Church center, Temple Square. It was quite impressive and as you probably know the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear them, however we did see the old Tabernacle building that was built in the late 1800's and is an acoustical wonder. It was the home of the choir and held 12,000 when it was completed. It recently under went a refurbishment and they made the pews more comfortable so only about 6,000 fit in there now. They did an acoustical demonstration during which they dropped 3 pins and 1 needle from the stage and you could hear it anywhere in the building perfectly without any microphones.

The church now has a new conference center (7 years old) which holds 21,000+ people. It, too, is unbelievable. It is used two times a year for their worldly conferences and for the choir's weekly TV/Radio shows. It's also used for other non-religious performances (they televised Olympic events from here). The acoustics are even better than the old Tabernacle and there's not a bad seat in the house.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the design is the roof. They have built a wonderful garden on top complete with water features. It's there for people to use (although access is more difficult since "911"). From the photo you would not even know you were on top of a building. It would be wonderful if some other places would adapt their roof designs and make our cities look better.

In addition to a beautiful setting you can take tours, see movies and talk to "brothers and sisters" from around the world. They really don't push their religion but you can see the history of how it developed. It was interesting and nothing like we expected. Well worth the visit.

Of course we want to do Salt Lake but since we were stuck in rush hour traffic trying to leave the city to get there (5 lanes each way) we decided to see it as we drive out tomorrow.

We are staying downtown and it's a blend of old, nice architecture and new modern buildings. It, like several other older cities, is going through a revitalization. They are doing a nice job of restoring the older buildings and the area is quite walkable.

Just in case you thought we were in a religious mood all afternoon, we did manage to find yet another micro brewery. This one is called, Squatters. They had a beer called, Chasing Tail Golden Ale. And, you know the label had a golden retriever on it. So guess which one Mare was drinking??? It was actually pretty good, but the Extreme Ale (with a bike going over the mountains) was tastier. Needless to say we felt right at home here and could walk back to our hotel.

The ride here from Bryce was very pretty with lots of meadows and grazing animals. As we approached SLC we could still see some snow on the mountain tops. The famed Park City ski resort is right here and looks like a great place to ski. (Good news.) Since SLC is basically surrounded by mountains the pollution can't always get out of the area. So today's levels were "dangerous." (Bad news.)

So we had a good day and tomorrow we're off to Idaho. We finished the "What I Believe" audio book today. It was quite inspiring as was the scenery.

Good night and love, Mare & Rich