Salt Lake City Research trip – Oct 26 to Nov. 2, 2008

Day one Oct. 26th
After talking the trip over for several weeks, we finally decided to sign up for the week long trip with the Palatines to America group of which we are members. The head office for this group is located in Columbus, Ohio. We belong to the New York Chapter. We received a number of communications from the group leader ahead of time, including a list of participants and an agenda and an information package on the Family History Library. We made our own plane reservations after watching the prices of our air trip for several weeks.

On October 26th we were up very early in the morning about 3:30 am to catch our 6:30 flight from the Ottawa Airport. This is a great time to travel by car as there is no traffic. Only those unlikely enough to be travelling on an early morning flight. Actually there was a huge line up of people catching our flight and other early flights waiting to pass through security and US Customs. The flight was a bit bumpy but we managed to land at Chicago on time. After about a two hour wait we boarded our final flight to Salt Lake City.

On arrival we had to wait at the airport for the Salt Lake Plaza Hotel van. We arrived at our hotel before the check in time so we stored our bags and decided to look around. As it turned out, the Family History Library is just out the back door of the Hotel and Temple Square is just across the street.

On our walk through Temple Square we saw the Tabernacle (where the choir performes), the Assembly Hall, the Nauvoo Bell dating from about 1840, the Salt Lake temple, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and the Church Office Building where they have a very good cafeteria for staff and visitors to the Family History Library. The grounds were very well groomed. We then went on to the Brigham Young Historic Park at State Street and North Temple Street. Continuing up State Street to the North we worked our way up hill to the Utah State Capitol. This was not as easy as it might appear because Salt Lake City is at an altitude of about 4,300 feet above sea leave. Not being used to such an altitude the walking did increase the heart rate a bit!

The domed state Capital is a gorgeous example of a capitol building, but unfortunately being late Sunday afternoon it was not open. Not many people out walking by the way. The views from this hill were great showing the city below surrounded by mountains. Also on the Capitol hill is a monument to the Mormon Battalion. The US Army recruited 500 men from the Mormons en-route to Salt Lake to serve with in the war with Mexico.

On our way back down the hill we stopped to see the Beehive House, the Eagle gate and the Lion House. By the way the Beehive, symbolizing Industry, is the state symbol.
We then went back to the hotel to meet our Palatine group for supper and a brief meeting afterwards to meet everyone and receive some tips on researching at the Family History Library.
The time in Salt Lake is two hours behind Eastern time so having been up at 3:00 an were were Tiirrreeedddd!