{July 2011}
Continuing on with my journal of your summer travel adventures . . .
(for those of you wondering, it is my goal to get caught up enough to journal about my amazing trip to Guatemala, Ryan and I kept detailed notes about our trip so that I could document it and share it with friends and family, before the end of the year)
Moving along . . .
Following our visit to the County Building, we jumped on Trax (which is free to ride all around the downtown Salt Lake area), and headed over to Temple Square.
Our first stop was actually just West of Temple Square at the Church History Museum. It is a collection of art and artifacts and educational exhibits that shares the story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
1 thing that really struck me as we walked around the museum was this large portrait of a Mormon pioneer company that had come across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley . . .
From some of their faces, you could almost sense the intense sacrifices they made and struggles they faced to come west.
a wedding dress - the clothes on display were so tiny! - many of the people from that time were small in stature due to malnourishment
There were many interactive exhibits for the kids to explore. I believe this one was a mural of one of the ancient peoples of the Americas.
Temple building with large foam blocks.
My kids were amused by this tortilla tossing game.
They also had an exhibit where you could dressed up in some of the traditional clothing of Mexico and learn how to do a traditional dance by following a video.
Everyone got in on that - me, my SIL, and all the kids
My niece Juliet had a lot of fun twirling around and following along.
Here is Zack striking a "Moroni" pose. This statue is similar to the ones you see atop all of the LDS temples. The missionary there told us that it actually came off of an old chapel. Apparently in the old days, several of the chapels also had statues of Moroni on top.
The museum had a replica of the podium that sits in the Conference center from which the Prophet and the General Authorities and other leaders of the Church give counsel during General Conference. My niece Anna had memorized her line from a Primary program and actually climbed up to the podium to deliver her line. The senior missionary standing by thought she was so cute.
We then headed across the street to Temple Square. A man stopped us right when we got over there and asked me to take his picture with the missionaries. He had traveled far to come visit the temple. Every time I have visited Temple Square, I meet people from all over the world, some from places I have never heard of.
We have been to Temple Square several times before so we didn't really take that much time going through the visitor centers. We just did the highlights . . .
We stopped to see the Christus statue in the North Visitor center and took some time to reflect.
And we just spent some time sitting in the gardens looking at the temple itself
We also checked out the new model replica they had of the Salt Lake Temple in the South Visitor Center which had the side taken out so you could see what it looks like in the inside (but in miniature).
From the east end of the square, before the rain came pouring down . . .
At this point, with it raining, my SIL and BIL went to retrieve our vehicles which were downtown by the county building. Since we had never seen the "Beehive House" (the house where Brigham Young lived with his family), the kids and I went on a tour while we waited for Jacque and Jeff to pick us up.
Some rooms in the house . . .
the music room
the school room
the play room
Following the tour of the Beehive House, we attempted to go out to eat at the Red Iguana which incidentally has some pretty good Mexican food but the wait was over an hour. The kids were way beyond hungry. Since the kids were all starving, we ended up at Gateway in the food court where Madison said we had the "crappiest Mexican food ever". Oh well.
It had been a super long day with spending the whole morning and part of the afternoon in Provo and then spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in Salt Lake. Thus, we headed back to Jacque and Jeff's where we crashed.
Stay tuned for part 4 . . .
