Today was a great day. We got up, had breakfast in the hotel (where they incessantly play bad ’70s mush-pop, like Bread; I wish they’d quit), and headed over to the Tabernacle for the 3,860th broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word. The choir was delightful; as good as they sound on the BYU satellite channel, they sound ten times better in person. The volume and clarity of their singing is just amazing. You miss a lot of the fine notes of that magnificent pipe organ, too, particularly the vibrato at the end of each passage. This was probably the high point of my trip so far.
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| The Tabernacle Choir in their natural habitat |
After that, we went to have our picture taken at the pedestal that overlooks the Temple. Unfortunately, our two pictures both came out poorly; Arlene was sticking out her tongue in one (ostensibly to moisten her lips) and had her eyes closed in the other. We’ll try again tomorrow. (We also took this picture, just for David– it was his special request.) Of course, at the time we didn’t know anything was amiss, so we headed over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for the Salt Lake 18th Ward sacrament service. It was quite nice, although oddly there were only two talks. One of them was really moving; it was given by a man who had only recently joined the church, and who had had a fairly rough road of life until that point. He was very sincere in his appreciation for God and the blessings that he’s received. THe other talk was given by a newly returned missionary; she served in the Oregon Portland deaf mission, so she closed by giving her testimony in American Sign Language. It looked to me like she was signaling the pitcher, but Arlene speaks a little Ameslan, so she understood some of it.
After church, we walked back to the hotel, changed clothes, and set out for the Rodizio Grill, another Karen recommendation. Rodizio’s is a kind of churrascaria, which is basically a Brazilian cross between a tapas bar and dim sum. You sit down, and the servers bring skewers of various foods– steak, chicken, some outstanding Brazilian pork sausage, and so on. You ask for what you want, and they serve golf-ball-sized portions, so you can get some variety. The food was terrific. My favorite, surprisingly, was grilled pineapple– it was a little crispy on the outside and still warm, but very, very juicy.
After lunch, we decided to drive to Park City, without benefit of maps. We ended up headed north on I-15, toward Layten. That was OK; we drove for a while just looking at the mountains. We turned around right outside the main gate of Hill AFB. On the way back, Arlene pointed out a sign for Antelope Island, which is actually in the Great Salt Lake. On a whim, we decided to visit. We drove along a causeway over some (bad-smelling) salt flats before we entered the park proper, then we drove around looking for some of the 600 buffalo that live there. No joy, unfortunately. We did climb up Buffalo Point. At first, I wasn’t going to, but then I asked myself: what would Chris Larsen do? So, we climbed it.
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| Arlene taking a break enroute |
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| On top of Old Smokey… |
Buffalo Point is just over 5000′ above sea level, but only a bit over 500′ above the trailhead, so it’s not like climbing K2 or anything. Still, it was my first significant climb. Yay! We drove back to the hotel (marveling how many ugly refineries and other industrial sites are just to the west of I-15) and came up to the room to rest.
Finally, a couple of things I forgot to mention in earlier entries:
- Our rental car has a Sirius satellite radio. I really wanted to like it, but the audio quality is only fair, with an overall flat, affectless sound– not too dissimilar from low-bitrate MP3s. They also play the same songs over and over, at least on the country channels. $10/month? No thanks.
- At Shula’s, when Arlene wanted to check the doneness of her steak, the waitress sliced it open and produced a Mini Maglite from her apron. Problem solved.
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