27 – Salt Lake City

Our trip to Salt Lake City had been a bit strenuous. The first part had been through driving snow which obliterated the road signs, so it was difficult to know exactly where we were at any particular time. US road signs are not the greatest at the best of times.

When we reached Salt Lake we got a bit lost and ended up going round in circles for a bit before finding our hotel which was just on the edge of downtown.

Salt Lake City is the home of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).

We were just along the road from their headquarters, so we went for a look around the Temple and the Tabernacle.

The buildings are all within Temple Square which has some beautiful gardens and fountains. We had thought that we might have been pestered by the Mormons but they were just polite.

The city was very clean and well laid out when we got used to it.

They had some beautiful shopping malls which we walked through.

We decided to take a trip up into the mountains to see the sight of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

There was very little snow left but we saw where the bobsled, ski jumping and other events took place.

The museum was really interesting.

Just down the road from our hotel was the Energy Solutions Arena which is the home of Utah Jazz basketball team. We took in a game while we were in the city.

 Jazz were playing against the Dallas Mavericks who were last year’s champions.

The game was very close and went into triple overtime before the Jazz won by two points. Including the overtime, game play was 63 minutes yet the game started at 7pm but didn’t finish until 10:30pm. There was constant stops and time out for what appeared to be no reason. Don’t think I’ll ever figure out the rules and regulations of basketball.

The museum of natural history was amazing. They have the largest collection of dinosaur bones in the world. Many of them had been unearthed around Utah. They have an onsite lab which is constantly cleaning and preparing bones for display.

 We spent a few hours wandering around looking at the displays.

Thanksgiving Point has a large garden where we wandered around looking at all the flower displays.

They have a tulip festival at this time of the year.

There must have been hundreds of different types of tulips.  They also had an area known as The light of the world.  It is twelve bronze statues of Christ.

Each of the statues depicts a passage from the bible.

We took a trip to Antelope Island which is in the Great Salt Lake. Access to the island is via a seven mile causeway. The island is home to a herd of buffalo which roam freely over the land.

We managed to get really close to some of them.

Our stay in Salt Lake City was short but we enjoyed what we saw before heading off for our final destination.