A Visit Downtown

For the month of September, I am using prompts from a project called 30 Days Hath September. Each day has a prompt for something to capture, something to collect, and something to record. The prompts are for a scrapbook album, but I thought they'd be wonderful blogging prompts as well. I am selecting one of the three prompts to write about each day. 

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September 27: A place you visit

There are so many places I could write about for this post - my library, Sam's Club, the track I walk around a few mornings a week, the grocery store, or even Disneyland. 

I considered writing about Moochies, one of my favorite places to eat. After all, I would have had to go to Moochies and eat for a photo op for this post (genius, right?) But looking back over my posts from the past few months, it is clear that I eat out waaaaay too much, and I haven't done a very good job keeping that a secret from you. Why add to the evidence?

I decided to write about none of the above (though each could have its own post or two). 

One place I like to visit from time to time is downtown Salt Lake City. It's definitely a love/hate relationship. I love being downtown, and I hate being downtown. But regardless of my conflicting emotions, downtown Salt Lake is a special place. It's wonderful and scary and exciting and strange and beautiful all at once. 

There's something about navigating downtown that makes me feel - excuse my language - bad ass. I've felt this way ever since I was a teenager. As a teen, I learned how to get around downtown without a parent, and I felt so cool. Sometimes I rode Trax, and sometimes I drove, but in each scenario, I was independent, and insanely awesome. This prepared me for my first two years of college, in which I went to school downtown (and got my first traffic violation and had to go to traffic school at the downtown courthouse). 

My two favorite parts of going to school downtown were:

1) Seeing Ned Winder, a temple sealer* who commuted to the Salt Lake Temple from West Valley in his red Porche, wave to me every morning on North Temple. We often ended up in the same traffic flow as we rolled into the city, and he always recognized me in my car and greeted me with enthusiasm at stop lights.

and 

2) Getting to drive down the big hill after school. It was the essence of freedom! And that's why I got nabbed by the cops for going 15 mph over the speed limit in a residential area. I was celebrating my liberation from class!

For the past month, I've been studying a lot of Church history. I read the new book, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in Latter Days, which sparked my interest a little more than anything has in the past. 

I've been listening to some podcasts with Church historians and re-reading the gospel topic essays. With Church history fresh on my mind, I decided to take a trip to the Church History Museum. 

I've been there dozens of times with my kids, but I wanted to go ALONE. So my mom watched Eva for me while Zoe was at school yesterday, and I went to the museum by my bad ass self.

During this visit, I was particularly drawn to the hand-written documents that are on display. I love "old" handwriting. There is a page of Oliver Cowdery's transcription of the translation of the gold plates at the museum, and his handwriting is stunning. The lines are so straight and beautiful.

I laughed at the contrast between his penmanship and Joseph Smith's. But I appreciate Joseph Smith's sloppiness. Just one more thing to love about him!

{Joseph Smith's journal}

I also liked Wilford Woodruff's journal because it seems he was a bit of a doodler.

After my museum visit, I walked over to City Creek for a while and then to Temple Square. I took some photos of the flora and helped some tourists get their temple shots. 

{Photos from yesterday}

As a general rule, you can't walk the grounds of Temple Square and not stop to take pictures of the flowers. Try it, I dare you!

 {Photos from earlier this year}

From there I met up with Scotty on the plaza, and we walked to the Olive Garden for lunch (we had a gift card, woot! woot!)

But first, I had to appreciate more flora!

*A person who performs marriages within temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints