Salt Late City, Day 1: Organ Recital and Capitol Building

Dear Husband dislikes the cold and grey of January and February, so we try to get out of town to somewhere warmer, like Tampa (twice!), Phoenix (also twice!) or Santa Monica. With my academic schedule and Ash Wednesday, we often can't get away until March. This year I asked him to let me change things up by flying out to Salt Lake City to visit a friend from residency and get a little extended wintertime with two nights in Park City, which helped SLC host the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. When our direct Delta flight landed Sunday night, we picked up our white Jeep rental car and bunked down with our friends and their two cats.

After a chill Monday morning, our sightseeing itinerary started with a organ recital at the Mormon Tabernacle. These are held daily at noon (or 2pm on Sundays) for free by a different organist. We heard a "Fanfare" by William Mathias [unknown relation], Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major, and a "Méditation" by Maurice Duruflé. Every program is different except for variations on the Mormon pioneer hymn "Come, Come, Ye Saints" and "an old melody" of the organist's choosing, in this case "Fairest Lord Jesus." Brian Mathias ended today's with another French piece, Eugène Gigout's "Grand chœur dialogué."

The day had its share of frustrations, like navigating the parking around the street construction and the Temple Square around its construction. Despite a delicious lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, we had given up on catching the city bus up the hill to tour the state capitol building, when I heard the familiar sound of air brakes and a wheelchair ramp unfolding. So we turned around to find the right bus at the stop we had just left--AND it was free, because downtown Salt Lake City is a fare-free zone.

At the Capitol, we skimmed the historical exhibit and watched the short video about the monuments on the grounds. There are quite a few, from a copy of Cyrus Dallin's statue of Massasoit (Ousamequin, c. 1581-1661, Pokanoket); a statue of early Mormon female physician Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon (1857-1932); and four marble lions named Fortitude, Honor, Integrity, and Patience. Beehive imagery abounds, from sculptures outside to hexagonal tiling to the bars on the elevators. The first petition to create a state in the area--which was so large it would have included parts of six current states--called it the "State of Deseret," for the word for "honeybee" used in the Book of Mormon. They valued the importance of hard work and community, and "Industry" has been the state's motto since 1959.

The three-story rotunda is beautiful, with murals that were added after a restoration two decades ago.

This is us on the fourth floor where the skylights let in the sunshine. To the left is the staircase from the Supreme Court on the third floor to the main second floor. Not pictured: the bride and groom who were doing their "first look" (caught on film) or the quinceañera having photos taken in the largest pale green, bedazzled, hooped ballgown I have ever seen. Utahns take the moniker "the people's house" seriously, so the docent told us such scenes are common, especially when the Japanese cherry trees bloom for about three weeks later in the spring.

We also learned that the state bird is the California gull because of "the miracle of the gulls"; in 1848 a bunch of them ate the grasshoppers and locusts that were decimating the Mormon's second crop. Some 5th graders petitioned to change the state tree from the blue spruce (rare in these parts) to the more abundant quaking aspen. And the state flag was changed in 2024 from a complicated seal on a royal blue background to something simpler that she doesn't like as much as the one depicted in embroidery here, with its eagle, six arrowheads for the six tribes that occupied the land when the first band of 150 Mormons arrived in 1847 under the leadership of Brigham Young: the Paiute, Shoshone, Goshute, Navajo, and the Utes. Either two arrows are for the Utes, who split into two bands at one point, or the sixth arrow is for the settlers.

Sumptuous Gold Room that the Executive Branch uses for official matters, with furnishings from around the world.

Then it was time to hop back in our Jeep and take Route 80 through Parleys Canyon into the Wasatch Mountains. At Kimball Junction we got off and took winding and/or dirt roads up, up, up to Silver Summit, at an altitude of 8,000 feet. I had found us an AirBnB on the second floor of a guy's garage "barn." The windows on all four sides look out onto gorgeous scenery, and as you can see, there was still a little snow! Dinner was excellent food in a casual atmosphere at Twisted Fern, one Park City's fine dining eateries.

Up next: Utah Olympic Park!