Salt Lake City; Lehi; South Bend
A song from Shrek.
At Temple Square we were spoken to by a nice, young, Taiwanese missionary.
Where have you come from?
Indiana.
What brings you to Salt Lake City?
Our honeymoon.
How exciting! – would it please you to be married to each other for all of eternity?
We don’t believe in that (I told her after an awkward pause).
What is your church?
The Missionary Church (said Karin).
Oh! The missionaries! Good! Did you talk to the missionaries?
Yes. We talked to the missionaries many times.
That’s good. That’s very good. Well, enjoy your visit to Salt Lake City.
Thank you.
We strolled upon the grounds; we peeked into the building where the famous pipe organ sits. The Temple itself cannot be accessed, but a 3-D model of its innards can be viewed in the South Visitors’ Center. In the North Visitors’ Center we looked at some religious art. I tried to photograph a scene of the Garden of Eden, but, no matter how I adjusted the camera, Eve & Adam came out blurry.
Was this a trick of the lighting? Was it something supernatural?
Wipe your camera lens, said Karin.
Oh.
The next day we rode the public transport out to the suburb of Lehi, where there’s a tourism complex called Thanksgiving Point. It has museums, gardens, and a petting zoo. We began with the Museum of Ancient Life, where we looked at dinosaur skeletons and browsed through a gift shop that had all sorts of plush and plastic dinosaurs. We viewed a video, from 1991, of the dinosaurs’ extinction. … Next we visited the petting zoo, which was rather crowded: there were numerous Mormon mothers, blond, thin, carefully made up, pregnant, with three or four small children in tow.
The real challenge was presented by the next site, a children’s museum/playground. Getting there required a couple of miles of walking in the harsh desert sunlight. We’d forgotten our sunscreen, and we’d already been on our feet for a long time. I was getting grumpy.
Walk, walk, walk. We passed office parks. The sun glinted off of the windows. SUVs full of children drove past us.
The mountains began to look rather different.
Are you sure you want to see this museum?, I asked Karin.
Yes. She was sure.
When we got there, I wasn’t thrilled. I felt like an adult at a Chuck-E-Cheese. There was an enormous jungle gym-type structure of mesh and slides and rope bridges. Due to my great fat, I had trouble extricating myself from the rope bridges. … What I did wish to try was the “wind room,” a small compartment through which blew gusts of up to 85 m.p.h. The children hogged the “wind room” for a long time. But when we did finally get to try it, it was truly refreshing. I decided that it atoned for the rest of the children’s museum/playground.
What remained to be visited was the garden, right next to the museum; but to enter it, we again had to walk and walk. We passed an entire golf course. It became clear that this garden was enormous, and that it didn’t have much shade. At the entrance there were golf-cart rentals of $30 for one hour. We decided to stay on foot and to see only two-thirds of the garden.
Afterward, I was very grumpy. But I told myself, this is one of the precious aspects of marriage. This is an experience with my spouse.
I looked over at Karin, and she was beautiful. “I’m tired and I’m cranky,” I admitted to her. “But this has been a lovely day with you.” We held hands. We now knew the route better, and so we cut across some parking lots.
On the train, I enjoyed looking at Karin while she listened to her audiobook.
The next day we rode out to a nearer suburb. We ate at In-N-Out Burger and bought things at a thrift shop. We returned early to Salt Lake City, did our laundry, and rested up for the following day’s journey back to South Bend.
Now we’ve had two straight nights at home. Jasper is happy to see us, though mostly he hides in cool places, because his coat is thick and it’s sweltering in our apartment.
At Temple Square we were spoken to by a nice, young, Taiwanese missionary.
Where have you come from?
Indiana.
What brings you to Salt Lake City?
Our honeymoon.
How exciting! – would it please you to be married to each other for all of eternity?
We don’t believe in that (I told her after an awkward pause).
What is your church?
The Missionary Church (said Karin).
Oh! The missionaries! Good! Did you talk to the missionaries?
Yes. We talked to the missionaries many times.
That’s good. That’s very good. Well, enjoy your visit to Salt Lake City.
Thank you.
We strolled upon the grounds; we peeked into the building where the famous pipe organ sits. The Temple itself cannot be accessed, but a 3-D model of its innards can be viewed in the South Visitors’ Center. In the North Visitors’ Center we looked at some religious art. I tried to photograph a scene of the Garden of Eden, but, no matter how I adjusted the camera, Eve & Adam came out blurry.
Was this a trick of the lighting? Was it something supernatural?
Wipe your camera lens, said Karin.
Oh.
The next day we rode the public transport out to the suburb of Lehi, where there’s a tourism complex called Thanksgiving Point. It has museums, gardens, and a petting zoo. We began with the Museum of Ancient Life, where we looked at dinosaur skeletons and browsed through a gift shop that had all sorts of plush and plastic dinosaurs. We viewed a video, from 1991, of the dinosaurs’ extinction. … Next we visited the petting zoo, which was rather crowded: there were numerous Mormon mothers, blond, thin, carefully made up, pregnant, with three or four small children in tow.
The real challenge was presented by the next site, a children’s museum/playground. Getting there required a couple of miles of walking in the harsh desert sunlight. We’d forgotten our sunscreen, and we’d already been on our feet for a long time. I was getting grumpy.
Walk, walk, walk. We passed office parks. The sun glinted off of the windows. SUVs full of children drove past us.
The mountains began to look rather different.
Are you sure you want to see this museum?, I asked Karin.
Yes. She was sure.
When we got there, I wasn’t thrilled. I felt like an adult at a Chuck-E-Cheese. There was an enormous jungle gym-type structure of mesh and slides and rope bridges. Due to my great fat, I had trouble extricating myself from the rope bridges. … What I did wish to try was the “wind room,” a small compartment through which blew gusts of up to 85 m.p.h. The children hogged the “wind room” for a long time. But when we did finally get to try it, it was truly refreshing. I decided that it atoned for the rest of the children’s museum/playground.
What remained to be visited was the garden, right next to the museum; but to enter it, we again had to walk and walk. We passed an entire golf course. It became clear that this garden was enormous, and that it didn’t have much shade. At the entrance there were golf-cart rentals of $30 for one hour. We decided to stay on foot and to see only two-thirds of the garden.
Afterward, I was very grumpy. But I told myself, this is one of the precious aspects of marriage. This is an experience with my spouse.
I looked over at Karin, and she was beautiful. “I’m tired and I’m cranky,” I admitted to her. “But this has been a lovely day with you.” We held hands. We now knew the route better, and so we cut across some parking lots.
On the train, I enjoyed looking at Karin while she listened to her audiobook.
The next day we rode out to a nearer suburb. We ate at In-N-Out Burger and bought things at a thrift shop. We returned early to Salt Lake City, did our laundry, and rested up for the following day’s journey back to South Bend.
Now we’ve had two straight nights at home. Jasper is happy to see us, though mostly he hides in cool places, because his coat is thick and it’s sweltering in our apartment.
