Salt Lake City

I don’t often write about city trips but this one is a bit of a mixed bag. Salt Lake City and the surrounding areas have a ton to offer both culturally and naturally. There’s not many places where you can get from the big city to over a half dozen ski resorts within 30 minutes to an hour.

To avoid city living for the few days we were there, we set up camp in Park City, just a short distance from Salt Lake City. It was cool visiting Olympic Park, home of the 2002 winter olympics. Park City is a bustling town, even in the summer, with tons of shops, restaurants and bars. It seemed to be a pretty affluent area as well. After a $20 burger and $6 beer, we moved on.

The main pull to downtown Salt Lake City for us was Temple Square. The Mormon culture and history is on display here and we were fortunate enough to get a private tour of some of the facilities by two of the sisters. Although the temple is undergoing major reconstruction, we were able to visit the Tabernacle, built in 1867 and the Assembly Hall, built in 1882. Both buildings were quite impressive as was the history provided by our tour guides.

There are also plenty of museums in the downtown district, in which we visited two. The Leonardo is an art, science and technology museum, and although interesting it was a little underwhelming. The Church History Museum was very well done and provided an extensive history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I was in Salt Lake City for business several years back and I had fond memories of the drives through Big Cottonwood Canyon and Little Cottonwood Canyon. Since Shannon hadn’t seen this area and I was up for seconds, we did both drives and they were as beautiful as I remembered, minus the fall foliage from my last trip. With the close proximity to Salt Lake City, this drive would be a miss for anyone visiting the area.

We got a tip from a local to visit Mirror Lake so we packed up the dogs for a day trip to explore. The drive to Mirror Lake takes you past a beautiful waterfall and across the summit of Bald Mountain at 10,759 above sea level. The views up top were as wonderful as you would imagine. Mirror Lake is just down from the summit and surrounded by the (still) snow capped mountains. We took a hike around the lake with many stops along the way for the dogs to swim in the crystal clear water. It was a fun day and a great suggestion from our friend at the Mangelsen art gallery in Park City.

Speaking of the Mangelsen art gallery, when we visited the gallery and saw a picture of the photographer, Tom Mangelsen, we instantly recognized both him and his amazing photos. He spends a lot of time in the Tetons and we may have actually ran into him when we were there last May. His work is amazing and the pictures brought back so many great memories of one of our favorite places on the planet. It was really cool seeing his photos and thinking… I have that same photo in my phone. Well, so maybe not quite that photo, but my own amateur version of it. But as Tom would say, the magic is being there, whereas the photo is just the outcome.

Our last stop on the trip was to the Homestead Crater Mineral Dome. The Crater is a 65-foot-deep geothermal spring, hidden within a 55-foot tall, beehive-shaped limestone rock. The Crater formed 10,000 years ago when melting snow on the Wasatch Mountains seeped deep within the earth. Two miles below the surface, the earth’s interior heated the water. As it percolated upward, it picked up minerals, which were then deposited on the surface, eventually forming the volcano-shaped limestone deposit. The mineral water at a constant 95 degrees made for a very relaxing soak.

Be sure to check out all of our pictures from the Salt Lake City area.