We left Fargo and stopped at a familiar campground in South Dakota. Austin whispered sweet nothings to his old friend Yogi.Austin insisted he had grown a few inches since the last time (just a week or two ago) we were at the Yogi Bear Jellystone RV Park.Jay took off early in the morning and rode his bicycle into downtown Sioux Falls. As soon as Jay returned, we began the 800-mile journey from Sioux Falls to Salt Lake City. We drove straight into an impressive thunderstorm. Frankie surprised me by snuggling into my lap as I blogged about our travels.It was a wet drive butt we got to enjoy a nice rainbow at the end of the storm.Soon, Frankie took over the sunny spot on Tink’s dash and settled in for the long drive. And then… we were in Utah! This is scenic Echo Canyon, one of the stopovers for pioneer travelers on the Mormon Trail. Today, it’s a highway junction where the road from Wyoming splits. One way leads to Salt Lake City (SLC); the other way leads to Portland.I used the boys as sled dogs to help me climb the steep trail.We posed in front of the iconic Welcome sign and kissed to celebrate our arrival into Utah. Or maybe we just kissed because we wanted to. Who needs a reason to kiss?We found a KOA Campground just outside of downtown SLC. In fact, it is so close we pretty much just rode our bicycles into downtown instead of taking the Jeep.
Salt Lake City was on our list of Tour Stops due to two reasons: (1) our nephew Ben is attending school there and (2) we’ve never taken the time to really explore downtown SLC.
Ben welcomed us into town by visiting us at our campsite the evening we arrived.
We had serious business to accomplish.
It was draft night for our Fantasy Football League.
Ian, Ilene, and Dave all videoed in while Darby, our newest league member, elected to automate her choices since she was touring Europe or some other exotic locale.
This is the prize for which we all fight. I have been the reigning champion two years in a row and another year earlier. My peaceful, calm demeanor expressed through poetic writing belies the heart of a vicious, raging competitive beast.
Just to show you how warlike I am, I will share with you the logo of my championship team:
My Team is called the Dalai Llamas.
Following a raucous draft night of fantasy football, Jay and I headed into downtown on our bicycles to experience SLC sights, smells and sounds.
I had to send some postcards, so we stopped a postal worker to hand over my precious mailings. He was so happy to see us. He got out of his vehicle and spent the next 20 minutes explaining all the great bicycle trails around the city. Turns out, he’s an avid trail cyclist (and a friendly postman!)SLC is a beautiful city. Like most cities, it features sculptures by local artists. Most of the sculptures downtown were of fanciful insects.
Where do you think most people head as soon as they arrive in Salt Lake City? Perhaps the famous Mormon Salt Lake Temple?
You’re probably right. Butt, instead, we headed to the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The gothic architecture called out to us, “Stop by! Just for a quick visit. You won’t be disappointed.”The Cathedral was built between 1900-1909. The original interior was simply white walls with green columns.
Then in 1915, a bold Bishop with a strong artistic vision decided to liven the place up a bit. Inspired by Spanish gothic art of the late Middle Ages, the Bishop redesigned the entire interior. The color-loaded project was completed just in time for Christmas services in 1918.
Jay and I lit candles in memory and prayer for some of our loved ones who are waiting for us on the other side. I did light a candle for my mother even though she’s still waiting for us in the bus.Suddenly, we found ourselves wandering a big campus with a lot of young people milling about. I grabbed this handsome sophomore named Ben, and he posed for a picture with me at the U as in the University of Utah.
Nephew Ben is majoring in something called Quantitative Analysis in Markets and Organizations. We’ll see if it helps him in Fantasy Football.
The University was founded in 1850. More than 30,000 students attend the school which is famous for its respected research in the health sciences, vibrant student culture (although not quite as much of a party school as my alma mater, The University of Maryland), and accomplished athletic programs.Naturally, we shopped in the bookstore/student union and picked up an ornament for our Christmas tree. Ben and Jay posed with Swoop, the red-tailed hawk mascot for the University’s athletic programs. Ben is a student manager for the University’s basketball team this season. We walked through some of the buildings on campus. These modern buildings are nothing like the colonial buildings you’ll see on older Universities on the East Coast.Ben even took us into one of his actual classrooms. He tried to teach me a nugget or two about Quantitative Analysis. I did ask a question, “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” We rode back through downtown and enjoyed entrancing insect sculptures.When we returned to the campground, Jay was happy to see our hired hands cleaning Tinkerbell. She was quite a mess after driving through all those thunderstorms.
The next morning, Jay and I hopped on our bicycles and decided to visit another downtown tourist attraction.
Again, not the Mormon SLC Temple, butt this time it’s the State Capitol. We learned Utah is known as the “Beehive State” because the beehive symbolizes industry, community, and hard work. Utah became a state in 1896 and incorporated the beehive into the state flag because hard work is essential to a prosperous society.You can see the beehive in the state seal and on the flag.This is the state seal in the center floor of the inside of the Capitol.Not surprisingly, the Capitol has a big statue of Brigham Young, the first governor of the Utah territory. He was also the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as LDS or the Mormon Church).The Capitol is a popular place for wedding photographs.This is a wide shot of the rotunda of the state house (you can see the wedding photography session to the right). Jay posed in front of the Utah State Reception Room.And then he took a picture from inside a bathroom near the reception room. And this is the beautiful view of the city skyline from the steps of the state capitol.The public library – yes, the city library – is on the “must see” places to visit while in SLC. Once we saw it, we knew why. Every floor features different genres and includes local art as well as fireplaces surrounded by comfy chairs and couches. Perfect for reading a book by the fire on a cold, snowy day in Salt Lake City. All that’s missing is a steaming mug of hot cocoa.Even the rooftop of the library is a sight to behold! What a great place to bring a picnic lunch or have a romantic dinner while overlooking the city’s skyline. Jay and Ben took in the city view from the rooftop deck of the public library. Across from the library is the SLC Planet Fitness. It is one of the nicest Planet Fitness gyms I’ve been to in the country. The expanse of windows make it feel so open and light. We returned home to Tinkerbell. Austin greeted us with a welcome smile!
The next day we decided to see the #1 tourist attraction in all of Salt Lake City: the Mormon Temple. The Temple was completed in 1893, after 40 years of construction. At more than 253,000 square feet, it is the largest LDS Temple in terms of square footage.
The Temple is in the center of the 10-acre Temple Square in the middle of downtown SLC. Renovations on the Temple began in 2019 and are expected to be completed sometime next year. Church leaders ordered the renovations to ensure the building could withstand a magnitude 7.3 earthquake.
I’m glad we didn’t put the Temple as our #1 attraction in SLC since we couldn’t actually see the Temple behind all the scaffolding.
This is a statue of the Restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood. It is a recreation of an LDS event in 1829 in which three of Christ’s apostles (Peter, James, and John) lay their hands on a kneeling Joseph Smith (the founder of the LDS). Non-LDS members cannot enter the Temple (which is under renovation anyway), but we could -and did – go into the Tabernacle, which is home to the famous Mormon Tabernacle choir. We met two wonderful sisters who shared the history of the Tabernacle, told us about the 11,623-pipe organ, and demonstrated the amazing acoustics by dropping a pin in front of the organ. Visitors can hear the pin drop from any location in the building.
The sisters also told us upon completion of the Temple renovation, the Temple will be open to the public for just a few months in 2027. It will be a rare occurrence as non-members have not been in the Temple for well over a century. Jay and I plan to make the trip to SLC in 2027. Seeing the Temple would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience and, best of all, we’ll see Ben again!
After our visit to the Temple Grounds, we met up with Ben on the wrong side of the now-abandoned tracks. He and Jay befriended a sculpture named Hoodah, a 15-foot-high troll, who was apparently assembled with mostly a glue gun during the night so as to surprise the locals in the morning. The surprise worked. And now Hoodah is the hottest thing in this industrial side of SLC. We wanted to take Ben to a nice restaurant since basically, up until this point, we had pretty much subjected him to pizza, ice cream, and burgers. Caffe Molise is a delicious Italian restaurant housed in a historic building brimming with atmosphere. The food was terrific, and the service was outstanding. After dinner, Ben gave us a tour of the house he shares with a few other University students. They had all just moved in so things were a bit chaotic butt the young men had already planned what type of party would be happening in each of the common rooms (and the back patio) during the semester.
When we arrived back at our campground, we noticed a subtle change in the residents and types of recreational vehicles in the park.
It was the first time we had ever seen multiple-unit RV structures in a RV park.
Workers had begun to arrive to begin construction on an ambitious, 100-acre, mixed-use development project across the street from the campground.
The multi-unit RVs in our campground each housed between six or eight workers, each with their own “private RV hotel room.”I was just so curious about the multi-unit RVs… This is what they can look like inside: individual units, a common kitchen and bathroom, and a larger unit for the “lead” construction manager. What a great idea for housing large numbers of short-term workers within walking distance to a construction site.
The Power District project is a huge investment on the sleepy west side of SLC. It will electrify the area with 1.3M square feet of office space, nearly 5,000 condominiums, and apartments, a hotel, miles of riverfront trails, 32,000 square feet of retail space, and … a major league baseball (MLB) stadium for Utah’s World Series’ MLB franchise!
Wait. There’s a major league baseball team in Utah? Not yet..
Butt, with the brand new, state-of-the-art stadium overlooking rivers and mountains and city skylines, what team wouldn’t love to be romanced into moving their franchise into the eager Beehive State?
The next day, we took Ben to a little-known garden downtown. The Gilgal Sculpture Garden is the work of a retired mason (now-deceased) named Thomas Child. He started work on the garden in 1945 when he was 57 years old.
His goal: to inspire viewers to ponder the unsolved mysteries of life.
Along with being a stone mason, Child was a bishop in the LDS Tenth Ward for almost 20 years. Some people dream of building Viking ships. Child dreamed of building a sculpture garden where, he said, “People may think I’m a nut.. but I hope to arouse their thinking and curiosity.”
After touring the Garden, we all agreed Child had indeed accomplished his goal: to arouse thinking and curiosity. Whether we thought he was a nut was beside the point.
Ben and Jay stand in front of The Sphinx, which features a finely carved face of LDS-founder Joseph Smith on a quartzite sphinx’s body. The sphinx is an ancient symbol of riddles and mystery. By putting the LDS Church founder’s face on the body of a sphinx, Child’s message is the LDS Priesthood may reveal the answers to life’s mysteries to all of mankind. Or, it may not. It depends on perspective. In any case, we were certainly thinking, which was Child’s ultimate goal. This is another one of the more “popular” sculptures in the Gilgal Garden. It is Elijah’s Cave. The Biblical prophet Elijah took shelter in a cave after fleeing into the wilderness to save his life. Child, the sculptor, engraved these words next to the head of Elijah, “He who reads me in ashes is my son in wishes.” In other words, “As you read these words, you will remember me and continue to think and be curious.” It might have been easier if he had just said that butt then the opportunity for a broader perspective and interpretation would have been lost. Good thinking Mr. Child!
It’s kind of hard to top our visit to the masonry garden of eternal thought woven through sphinxes and prophet heads.
Butt, this is what we were greeted with when we came back to Tinkerbell in the campground:
Austin was frozen in time. Someone. We’re not saying WHO exactly, had placed a golden toy atop of Austin’s head and ordered him not to move. Austin obeyed. His eyes were wide with fear.
Would Ziggy do such a thing? Clearly not.
That left one other responsible creature in the bus. A dark creature who sat calmly in the hallway, his sphinxlike body turned away so as to not acknowledge us.
He slowly and purposefully licked each of his front paws. Waiting for us to receive his telepathic order to find his own sculpture creation.
Frankie’s sphinx sculpture message was indeed much clearer than the mystical messages of the Gilgal sculptures.
It was a simple feline calling card… one well known to all humans owned by cats
And the calling card said in no uncertain terms to the driver of the bus, “It’s… time… to… go… home. NOW.”
Our Summer of 2025 Tour came to an abrupt end by declaration of a fed-up feline.
We packed our belongings, bid farewell to the construction workers who were now our campground neighbors, and agreed to head straight home to Tucson. No more stops. No more sphinx sculptures. No more calling cards.
We squeezed in as much as we could that’s for sure. Butt, it would be awesome to go with you & Randy since Randy’s a native SLCer. Touring the Temple would be quite the experience – made triple better with you guys by our side to provide colorful background info 😉
We did most of our travels on bicycle (since we dislike the stress of city parking) butt we did use Leap the Jeep for our travels with Ben
Wow you really did get a good thorough tour of Salt Lake City. We need to go with you next time, when the Temple s open to the public. Glad you got to see the city with Ben. Did you see all of this by using the Jeep? Because sometimes parking is a hassle in downtown areas.
Tinkerbell's Travels 
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