It took us two days to drive north from near the Arizona border up beyond Salt Lake City, where we are camped on Hill Air Force Base (no relation). We left the eroded sedimentary canyons behind and cruised up the Interstate in the Pahvent Valley between volcanic mountains on both sides. One item of note: we spent Friday night in the town of Fillmore, the county seat of Millard County – yes, that’s right: both named in 1851 after the sitting president, Millard Fillmore, the last Whig president who is usually regarded as little more than a giggle in history but in my opinion (after some reading about him) is probably underrated. Avoiding bad situations that could have turned out a lot worse is not such a bad legacy.
According to TripAdvisor, the best things to do in Salt Lake City are in Temple Square, and we are fortunate to have living near here my cousin John, who is a Mormon. He and his wife Tricia stopped by the base and picked us up this morning and we drove on down to Temple Square. First we ate lunch at The Pantry in The Lion House, built in 1856 as a home to accommodate Brigham Young’s – ahem – very large family, and now serving as a cafe. It was designed by Truman Angell, who also designed the Temple. Good food, good conversation.
John and Tricia led us around the 10-acre grounds of Temple Square,
giving us background information about the meanings of the different buildings and how they are used. The 26-floor Church Office Building sits behind a beautiful fountain.
Brigham Young himself in 1847 designated where the temple would be built, although it took 40 years to complete. The Temple is not open to visitors and is not used for routine worship services; it is the place where the most holy sacraments of the church take place. 
In the North Visitors’ Center, we saw a number of interesting exhibits about church history and current endeavors, which John and Tricia’s additional comments gave us great insight into, as well as an 11-foot marble replica of the beautiful Christus statue in Copenhagen sculpted by Bertel Thorvaldsen. It was presented to the church by LDS church leader Stephen L. Richards in the 1950s and is “intended to help visitors understand that Latter-day Saints (or Mormons) are Christians.”
We entered the Tabernacle and were fortunate to find that an organist was rehearsing, so we got to hear gorgeous music played on that fabulous organ. At the same time, two men in work clothes were drilling and hammering up in the choir loft, and the acoustics in the building are so perfect that we were also able to clearly hear their conversation about the repair they were doing as well as every hammer blow and dropped nail.
From there we went into the Family History Library.
It is everything I’ve ever heard about it, and way more. Not only are there the extensive databases and links, there are also many, many dedicated, incredibly (almost aggressively) nice volunteers who will sit with you to assist and guide your research for as long as you’ll let them. A man was helping John look into information about his mother’s family, and I asked him an idle question about Patrick’s grandmother: his mom told him that her mother had come from Germany, her name sounds Polish, and the 1940 Census shows her country of origin to be Russia – would those discrepancies have been because of shifting borders in that region at that time? The man immediately went and found a Polish expert who came over and began calling up sites in Polish that would shed light on both his grandparents and their origins.
On his father’s side, Patrick was interested in learning more about his great-great-great grandfather, Alexander Hill, who came west with Brigham Young in 1847. He already was aware that G-G-G-Grandpa had married three wives. The Polish expert led him to information that showed he actually had not three but five wives!
John and Tricia brought us back to our campsite, and we had a chance to sit and chat a little longer before they returned to their home in Logan, about an hour north. One of the best parts about the traveling we’ve done all over the country is seeing family and friends; while on the road I’ve visited with 12 of my 13 cousins! This was a wonderful time to reconnect with John and Tricia, to catch up on our families, and to gain an understanding of their faith.