Our Road Trips

9/12/2014

One year ago today, we were in NYC. We visited the Ground Zero Memorial with our friends who flew up to join us in NYC. It was an amazing day. It is unbelievable how much we have done & seen in the last year. But our thoughts today are with the families of the 343 FDNY men & women who gave the ultimate sacrifice to help save so many lives. RIP to you all. We are eternally grateful.

Our ice machine stopped working, so I went on the internet and found the local service center, which happened to be in Tooele, UT. So we loaded up the broken machine in the car and headed west. Our route took us through Salt Lake City, along the south edge of the Great Salt Lake and then south from I-80 to Tooele. We found the place, as scary as a place could be for an authorized service center, we went in and this character was standing behind the counter who didn't even know what an ice maker is. With some prompting, we showed him one in one of his catalogs (he had never seen one before) and he called the home office in Indiana and they authorized a new machine. We headed back to Salt Lake armed with the address & an authorization number, found the distribution center and after some searching on their computer, left with a brand new machine...a little bit of a hassle that ended up OK.

Since we were back on the west side of Salt Lake City, we decided to go visit the Capitol & maybe Temple Square in downtown. We found the visitor's center across from the Capitol, got some maps and info from the nice gals in the center. We walked across the street to the Capitol and after a 20 min. wait, we got a nice tour of the building which lasted about an hour...pretty building that had been renovated in 2004-08 and updated with anti-earthquake equipment which raised the floor 4 feet on the first floor. They did a nice job on all the work, can't even tell the building is 102 years old or has had a major 4 year renovation. Of course, I managed to ask a question the guide couldn't answer.
Next up was Temple Square. We found a place to park next to the place, walked across the street and into the west gate...lots of folks milling around and signs stating that the Tabernacle was closed for an event. There were 'sisters' giving tours, which I really wasn't interested in, so we went our own way. Statues with a bunch of propaganda posted below all over the place...I was starting to feel pretty uncomfortable. But we went into Assembly Hall with a tour and took a few pictures and then left. We walked to the Tabernacle, as people were leaving. They let us in, I took a few pictures and within seconds, there was a 'sister' there to answer questions. The famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir had just finished do a recording session that we missed by minutes, so we left. Outside adjacent to the Tabernacle is the Temple. We had heard & read that we would not be able to enter this building, but I never expected what happened next. I took a picture of the west end of the building, walked along the south side & took several pictures and read the signage about the structure itself. We were walking east and there was a gate standing wide open which led to the east end, which is the main entrance. We walked past several 'Elders' who said something to Barb while we walked by. I walked to the center of the exterior of the building and took a couple of pictures. Another 'Elder' walked up and asked what we were doing there?? We said just looking and he told us we were in a place we didn't belong. Well, excuse meee!!! So we left. I told Barb I had seen enough, so we headed for the west gate and our car. We did walk into the Genealogy Library to look around and were treated just fine. Those folks made me feel pretty uncomfortable, glad it only lasted a little over an hour.
So we got in the car and headed back to our camper. Traffic was light and the drive is really pretty once we cleared the city center. When we got the Heber City, there was a Heber City fire truck set up in the center of town flying Old Glory out over the main street...pretty cool. We got back to the camper before sunset and I set up our new ice maker...it is making ice as fast as it can. Nice!!

We lit a fire, but the wind was swirling and the smoke made it uncomfortable to be near, so we let it burn down and went inside. An interesting day that had good & bad, but all in all, a fun time.

Steve & Barb Larson