Chapter 23

Our motel room was quite nice, with a couch and lots of plugs and even the elusive nightstands on both sides of the bed. However, perhaps it should have been a hint that this wasn't the best hotel, when as we arrived, the police were dropping off a middle school age kid who then hung around the parking lot talking on his phone. And by morning, Tom couldn't stand all the drug deals in the parking lot, and people living in their motor homes any longer, so he decided we were going out to breakfast. It was a good breakfast too. My sweet corn scramble really was made with sweet corn.

After breakfast, we drove downtown and started our day with the state capitol. It's built at the top of a hill, and looks out over the whole town. Of all the state capitols we have visited, this one had the largest open spaced in the middle, and was very bright with white marble inside. That makes sense, since Utah has lots of open space. Fun Fact: The capitol underwent a big renovation around 2008, and one of the things they found was a pair of shoes, wrapped in a newspaper from 1914, when the capitol was built. Apparently that's an old custom when building, for good luck.

There was also an exhibit of old maps, which chronicled how Utah got the shape it has. It used to include parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho, as well as all of Nevada. Also, the first suggested name for the state was Deseret (which means bee in some Bible-era language), but the US government rejected that as sounding too much like "desert", which would discourage people from moving there. Of course, it is a desert ...

Next we walked to Temple Square, the center of Mormonism. It is a quiet, beautifully landscaped block in the center of town, with the Temple, church, and welcoming centers. We decided to take a tour (there are many young women with badges showing their home country, wearing below the knee skirts and flat shoes, taking groups on tours).

It was interesting, and we learned some new things, like what the word Deseret means, and that the flower motif that's all over the capitol and the church is a sago lily. Sago lilies are poisonous, they said, unless you boil them. The Native Americans taught the early settlers to do that, and that's all they ate for a year, and they were so grateful to God for providing them with this food, that they thank Him and use the flower to remind them to be grateful. Only Mormons can go in the Temple, but there's a complete model in the welcome center, so you can see all the parts. That's not actually the church though; we did go in the church on the tour. The Temple is for special ceremonies, like weddings, and there were lots of wedding parties around.

We then walked over to the Union Pacific Depot ... but it was closed. We walked down to the nearby Rio Grande Southern Depot, but it was surrounded by police vehicles, and some friendly officers told us that the Utah History Museum that was supposed to be inside does not exist, and they were in the middle of a homeless sweep. It was really hot for all this walking around -- they say it's a dry heat, which isn't so bad, but at some point, it's just too hot, dry or not.

We were generally heading back to the car, but ran across the very large farmer's market. They had lots of chilies and stone fruits, but we found the ice tea, and I had some rose cardamom iced green tea. Also we appreciated the "Celebrating Cultural Diversity" signs, as well as the world music.

On our way back to the car, we walked through downtown, which has shops (mostly national chains) and just a few tall buildings, like Wells Fargo and USBank. The Mormons have a tall building too.

We also ran across Brigham Young park, very neat and clean like Temple Square. We also went into the Joseph Smith Building, which was originally a Mormon hotel. Now it has restaurants and Mormon business.

Next, we drove up a big hill to the University of Utah. We have been to lots of history museums, and several art museums, so today we went to the Natural History Museum. Also: air conditioning.

This is a really well laid out museum, and just the right size. It has lots of dinosaur skeletons. I'm sure I've never seen so many dinosaurs all in one place before.

We also liked exhibits about Utah and the Salt Lake, and gems of the world. They had a special exhibit about the Vikings, so we looked at that too.

One thing we liked was their storeroom has a glass wall, so we could see everything all lined up on shelves, and see the "dinosaur of the week".

We did some errands at Walgreen's and Trader Joe's (made harder by the terrible parking lot, so yes, it's the same as every other Trader Joe's). We chose our dinner restaurant by looking at what was nearby, and had some delicious Greek food. Then we drove half an hour to Ogden to our motel, which appears to be free of drug dealers.