We had such a great time visiting the "friends" from the South in Idaho, but needed to hit the road early on our way down into Utah. We first went across east into Montana, and then, after Janae had her first Chick-fil-A (which is apparently a big deal or something), we turned south.
It took almost thirteen hours, and several coffees to reach Salt Lake City. We kept our eyes peeled for the Mormon Temple (which we were told, "you can't miss, from the highway")
We totally missed it.
We did see several impressive temples from the highway, far up in the hillsides around the city. We kept saying "is that it?", and "I feel like it should be bigger", then, on coming around a hill into the downtown area, we spotted a massive building just off the highway.
"This has to be it!"
I'll take a slight aside here and say I have never actually looked up what the Mormon Temple looks like, or where it is in the city, so forgive us our naivety.
It was not.
We see this building from the highway, I mean come on that looks like its gotta be it. But it is clearly giving off Government vibes. And turns out to be the State Capitol Building. I don't want to take away from it, an impressive building, but by getting caught up in it, we totally missed the Mormon Temple not far away.
Capitol Building in yellow circle, Mormon Temple in red circle.
So we missed the Mormon Temple on our way through Salt Lake, which was not really the biggest deal, but was kind of the only thing that I know of in the city. We stayed the night, then continued our way down to the southern end of Utah, to a little town called St. George.
St. George is a beautiful, small town, close to Zion National Park, and the home of some of Janae's relatives. I will not get too far ahead of our adventures in Utah, but I would like to thank Janae's family in welcoming me so warmly, I had a wonderful, relaxing time in Utah, and look forward to spending more time getting to know you all better in the future.
Last little photo dump and note, Steve(father-in-law) and I got up on early on one of the mornings in St. George and headed up into Zion to catch the sunrise. We were too close to not check it out, and found a nice canyon overlook trail that turned out to be quite popular. There were two, not one, two, wedding parties there that cold, windy morning before sunrise. I only snapped the photo of one, but trust me there was another around a different vantage point.
-- Josh
