Last night with friends - Toured Temple Square

😢😢Captains Log August 28 – This morning before heading out I called Gina to see if they

Assembly Hall

wanted to meet for dinner since it would be our last night.  They readily said yes so we planned to meet at Black Bear Café. 

Then we headed across the road to the public transportation rail, bought our one way ticket and waited for our train.  About half way up the street a pick-up truck tried to out run the train and hit it.  There weren’t many of us on the train but we had to fill out little info cards in case we later claimed injury.  No one was hurt and we didn’t even know why we stopped initially.  The pick up truck was more damaged than the train.  He had a flat tire, scraped up side panel in addition to a ticket and paying repairs on the front of the train!  An exciting way to start our visit to Temple Square.

Inside Assembly Hall

We exited right at the corner of the square.  Just inside the gate was the Information Building so we picked up a map and the young lady we spoke with marked what was open, as the Cathedral was closed for repairs and other buildings were closed due to Covid.  Oh well, we made the best of it anyway.

There were well over 150 girls, all dressed in various black dresses and ages from 6 to 18.  They all play the harp.  They were rehearsing with their “groups” in the Tabernacle and it was closed to the public.  So we started in the Assembly Hall and sat and listened to beautifully played organ music.  The hall itself actually looks like a church to us.

The entire Temple area was blocked off and you could just look through a thick plastic sheet to see it.  There was a lot of scaffolding around it and the base was dug out around as they were doing work to stabilize it deep enough to withstand a 12.0 magnitude earthquake. Talk about a lot of money!!!

We walked along the side of the square where the Beehive House is and the flowers they

Beehive House

plant there are gorgeous!  It was open for tours but the tours were longer that we wanted to do so we headed further down the street to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  It’s actually an office building with fancy restaurants on the top floor.  So today there were no workers there and the restaurants are closed due to Covid so we spoke with a couple of the volunteers who told us

Temple from the top

about the building.  It’s truly gorgeous inside and everything is BIG!  The pillars, the statues, the paintings!

We took the elevator to the top where you can look out over the Temple and see the construction area much better than from the ground.  It’s much more impressive than what we could see from the ground because they have it all blocked off.

From there we crossed over to what we thought were all office buildings but there was shopping mall in the center of the buildings with a nice food court.  We got to have a Chick-fil-a!  Yum!  Then we walked it off going back to the Church History Museum.  It was very interesting and the people volunteering there are very knowledgeable and very willing to answer all of your questions.  We learned a lot more about the Mormons journey from the East.  I did not realize they had tried to settle in so many places and were shunned and even murdered.   We read about a number of sites in Ohio that we hope to visit on one of our trips back to our home state.

The train ride back was totally uneventful and much faster!  We didn’t do much other than

Dinner with Gina and Rick

read until it was time to head out to meet Gina and Rick for dinner.  It was a nice ending to our time together and we are hoping they will get to come to Florida in November. 

We stopped at Walmart for a few things since there won’t be one for our next 2 stops.  It was CRAZY!  I’ve never seen so many stock persons in any store and to do it on a Saturday evening!  Bill didn’t last long and went to the truck.  The check out lines were long and of course they are short staffed so didn’t have all of the self check areas even open.

Time to get home and put stuff away and prepare to head out in the morning!