Highlights From Salt Lake City: Part I

We crossed through Idaho and entered the Land of the Great Salt Lake, mountain-framed valleys, copper mines, Latter Day Saints, and enormous ground squirrels, in order to visit with my brother, Chris. Chris is deaf and uses American Sign Language, so this was a great opportunity to polish my vast signing skills and talents. (Ha!)

Really, I’m so out-of-practice I sign like a confused third-grader in slow motion. But somehow we managed because Chris is an amazingly gracious host and a super brother! Furthermore, he’s the best tour guide you could ever get… and even made an amazing itinerary perfect for highly-energetic, organized and single people visiting the city. Unfortunately, we aren’t any of those things, so in the end we accomplished about 10 percent of his beautiful itinerary (see actual itinerary below).

Here are some scenes from that 10 percent:

	When it is sunny, you cannot avoid seeing these mountains wherever you go. (Those with mountain-view-phobia should steer clear!)
	Our first dinner together at Chris’ house. How nice to cook in a kitchen that is larger than a closet!
	Rocky Road ice cream. Oh yeah.
	My brother and the kids in a scenic park. (I guess that’s obvious from the picture.)
	Me and Clara in front of the same mountain. (Uh, sorry for the boring caption.)
	Papa and Sophia hangin’ in the shade. (No, nothing exciting here either.)
	And finally some action! Those crazy ground squirrels are at it again! Even Clara is chasing them. Thankfully no one is fast enough so I don’t have to worry about rabies shots later on.
	Downtown Salt Lake. Chris took us for a tour of the LDS epicenter!
	We toured a LDS museum of sorts. Here is a replica of modern-day Jerusalem.
	This is an amazing room: A rotunda featuring walls of frescos depicting the night sky and enveloping a luminous statue of a noble Jesus.
	The earth.
	Jesus. I have to say, I really like LDS artwork. It’s contemporary, dramatic and touching. I have noticed that Christ is usually depicted as very fair with blue eyes. Interesting, right?
	If there’s one thing you can say about the LDS Church, they’ve got proselytizing down to a fine art. The LDS Sisters giving us the tour took us through a series of rooms, each with a beautiful video message meant to draw you into the Church.
	These LDS Sisters were lovely women and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them and discussing theology.
	They are very proud of their history and heritage.
	The Temple in Salt Lake City. We could not go inside, but we admired the dramatic gothic design from the courtyard.
	Oh yeah, that angel is covered in real gold. At $1200 an ounce, Sophia was wondering how to scale the walls and chip a few pieces off! (I know, we’re a classy bunch.)
	The whole area is in heavy development. That’s an LDS-owned condo high-rise being built!
	Sweet Sophia.
	The Temple in all it’s glory. Pretty neat to see.
	Bella in front of the reflecting pool… reflecting her cuteness.