On the Road Again – Salt Lake City

Beautiful, majestic temple

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Salt Lake City (SLC)? Is it the Tabernacle Choir, the Salt Flats, Temple Square (the center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) or the Winter Olympics in 2002? During my first week in SLC, I was busy working a conference but I made up for lost time by packing my three leisure days with tours of things that Salt Lake City and Utah is known for.

360 choir members and orchestra

I was lucky enough to hear the Tabernacle Choir twice. On Thursday night, I went with the conference delegates to a private performance for them and a another much smaller group from the UK.  They announced that a few days before, Bryn Terfel (famous Welsh opera bass-baritone) had recorded with the choir for an album that will be out this autumn. The choir, accompanied by a full orchestra, sang two Welsh songs so hearing those along with sharing the music with the Brits in the audience made me feel very at home. Not only do many of the Choir members have Welsh ancestors, but the beginnings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are traced to Welsh immigrants, who settled in the Salt Lake Valley in the mid-nineteenth century. My second time to hear them was during a recording of Music and The Spoken Word on Sunday morning. The Tabernacle was packed. Since the Choir will be off on tour in just over a week to promote their new album, the timing for my visit was perfect.

SLC Capitol Building

My next adventure was a tour of all of the top spots in downtown and close to the center of the city, including the State Capitol building (beautiful!), the Governor’s Mansion, the Old Mormon Pioneer Trail, the Pioneer Heritage State Park (an authentic historical village), Lion House (Brigham Young’s home and his other homes that housed all of his wives and 56 children), the Olympic stadium and village and many other sites along our way.

Summer on main street in Park City

The next day, I had my own private tour of Park City and the surrounding area. Historically, a mining town, with only a few thousand residents, it welcomes over 600,000 tourists each year, especially during the ski season. It’s also home to the Sundance Film Festival and many celebrities and politicians have second (or third or fourth) homes up in the mountains. I saw examples of ski runs directly behind their homes so they don’t have to slum it with the mere mortals who can only afford to stay and ski from town or nearby resorts. It’s also home of the USA Ski Team and I watched some of the young ski jumpers practicing. It’s strange to watch them jumping onto wet mats and then sliding onto the wet grass without snow!

My final day was filled with explorations that couldn’t have been more different. I spent the morning at the Family History Library at Temple Square. Since I’ve traced my ancestors back several centuries, I had very specific ancestors and dates in mind to circumvent the brick wall that I’d hit on both sides of my father’s ancestors. The library has so many volunteers who are incredibly knowledgeable and help people with their searches. With their help I was able to go a branch further on both sides. Now, on my father’s fathers side, I’ve gone all the way back to 1600 . On my father’s mother’s side, I was researching a Scottish ancestor who, according to a census record, was born in Ireland. Thanks to the extensive family search database, I was able to find out that both his daughters were also born in Ireland. I only had the morning so I couldn’t determine where, but volunteers gave me maps and a list of further websites that might help me with more research.



Endless salt flats

My afternoon was spent at Salt Lake. If you are going to be in Salt Lake City, you have to see the lake, right? I guess I’m one of those people who has to see things that I’ve always heard about, but I quickly decided that while maybe I’d recommend seeing it once, once is enough! The salt flats are amazing to see and it’s hard to imagine the size that the lake used to be while now it’s just vast stretches of salt.  There just wasn’t enough visual interest for me.

I found Salt Lake City a wonderful city to visit. The people are all so warm and welcoming. There are numerous things to see and do, the streets are pristine (actually, the whole city is pristine) and very walkable. But you have to realize that their city blocks are much larger than most and quite often you are walking uphill. There’s a convenient light rail and within the downtown area it’s free. Downtown is filled with an eclectic collection of restaurants and bars and the ones that I visited all had great food; however, you do have to be aware of their unusual alcohol rules.

I loved learning about the fascinating history of the challenging Mormon journey and the development of the mining area around Park City. That whole area is well worth a visit!