Salt Lake City, Utah
Friday, June 24, 2005
Today was a travel day. We left Teton Village at 8 this morning and spent the day traveling from Wyoming, through beautiful mountainous farm country in Idaho, and then over winding and rough mountain terrain as we moved from Idaho into Utah. We stopped at Heritage Park on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where we saw the many statues that were dedicated to the history of the Mormon Church. Before arriving at our hotel we were given a "tour" of Temple Square. What we saw of the art and the architecture was beautiful. Unfortunately, the tour appeared to be more of an attempt to convert us to Mormonism than anything else. They pointed out all the teachings of Mormon that agree with standard Christianity while omitting any thing that might be controversial. Most of us were quite uncomfortable and anxious to get free. In our opinion, the best part of the entire tour was seeing the beautiful statue of Christ they displayed in their upstairs room. We checked into the hotel around 5 and had very nice farewell dinner with the entire tour group. Since today is Al's birthday he was given a birthday card signed by everyone on the tour and, of course, was treated to a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday. Tomorrow we plan a day of laundry, repacking, and regrouping so don't expect to hear from us again until we arrive in Phoenix on Sunday evening.
