In town

We briefly considered the Cedar Breaks National Monument, the views are described as spectacular and colorful, a mini Bryce Canyon.  Bryce Canyon definitely seems too far away with only one day left.  A little session with Yahoo maps, more ever, revealed 75 miles to the monument and another spot on the internet revealed that the shortest distance highway is closed.  Cedar Breaks suddenly seemed almost as far away as Bryce Canyon.

We stayed in Saint George.  Saint George ended up being pretty interesting anyway.

This is Utah. Whilst still employed I met and got to know fairly well a guy from Salt Lake City. The company he worked for (Kennecott Exploration if you are really interested) was headquartered on again off again on again in Salt Lake City. The street address was something like 2200 North 2000 East. I asked him once about this arrangement of numbers and words which seemed confusing to me. He explained the whole center of the city at the Temple with all other addresses assigned according to a mostly numerical system measuring number of blocks from that central intersection. With this as a guide we set off down Tabernacle Street towards Main Street. I figured that in line with my usual tourist practice that I would photograph the largest church in town which we expected to find at that intersection.

Well, not exactly but close. At Tabernacle and Main in Saint George is the Tabernacle.

Right, me too. I thought a tabernacle was some sort of church. And it sort of is but it isn't the temple. Eventually we had the distinction explained to us, we now understand. If you are really interested I bet there is a Wikipedia article that will explain it all.

We were there a bit after 9 to discover that opening time was 10.  We wandered around checking out other structures in what was labeled the historic center of town by the very few interpretive signs we found.

Frame left of the photo of the tabernacle is a piece of sculpture depicting the establishment of the center of town.  We found a description of the sculpture on the other side of the intersection.

We also located the winter home of Brigham Young.  Tours there also began at 10am.  We found this out when a car stopped, a young woman got out and approached the fence beyond which a well dressed older gentleman was busy raising a flag.

She said, "Elder, the sign says you open at 10am yet the gates are still closed."

He replied that he had gone to temple this morning and was a little behind schedule as a result.

We decided tabernacle first, winter home second.

At the tabernacle Elder and Sister Raymond were most cordial and informative in giving us lots of information about the tabernacle.  The Raymonds started a chain of interesting coincidences by asking where we were from and immediately establishing a connection by informing us that their son had obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and that they had visited often.  Elder Raymond immediately asked us if we knew Swen and Ollie.  I didn't find it necessary to inform him that we know lots of Sven and Oles and that we have heard most of the jokes.  He was trying to be nice.

The tabernacle is used for some church functions but formal rituals including sealings occur at the temple.  Still the tabernacle is an important historical structure, the building of which was overseen by then Prophet Brigham Young himself.

For example, this free standing spiral staircase (one of two in the building) was hand built by master craftsman Miles Romney (Mitt's great grandfather).  It leads to a balcony.

The stairway is a beautiful piece of work but also revealed an odd idiosyncrasy that kept repeating itself throughout the tours we took.  All of the wood objects are made of Ponderosa pine, a soft wood, which is the only wood they had available in southern Utah.  Brigham Young was originally a Vermonter.  He preferred that the wooden things around him resemble the wood types, hard woods such as maple and oak, familiar to him from Vermont.  He directed that the pine be painted with a grain and color resembling hard woods.  It is all pine but it looks like maple and oak until you look closely.  Still, it is very beautiful wood working.

Here is a view of the interior of the tabernacle from that balcony.

Apparently one day during construction Young was sitting in the balcony assessing progress to that point.  He summoned Romney and informed him that five feet needed to be cut off the staircases as he found that he was not satisfied with the view from up there.  The balcony was too high.  Romney replied that cutting five feet off the stairway was not possible because to do so would leave the staircase leading into a wall instead of onto the balcony.

Eventually a compromise was reached.  There is a small area at the top of the staircase.  From there you take a short flight of steps DOWN to the balcony.

The balcony was already mostly completed.  It was lowered as required by Young by bringing in a crew of 200 men.  The crew stood on risers around the building under the balcony.  On a signal they lifted the balcony, another crew of workers cut five feet off the supporting structures.  The lifters then lowered the balcony down to the position where it now sits, an extremely impressive feat of teamwork and cooperation.

We toured the winter home.  Nothing terribly out of the ordinary for any building of that vintage except the wooden furniture, all pieces of pine painted to resemble oak and maple.  The tour guide there was not an elder, he identified himself as a missionary.  He was from Rochester, Minnesota, and instantly set about establishing a special affinity with his visitors from Minnesota.

At the completion of the tour we declined the offer of a free copy of the Book of Mormon, went to lunch and then headed towards the temple.  We had been allowed into the tabernacle but not even all Mormons are allowed into the temple.  You have to be "in good standing" and have a recommendation.  We entered the visitor center.

We were approached immediately by a young woman who greeted us and asked where we were from.  Upon being informed that we were from Minnesota she called to the nearby reception area where a senior Sister originally from White Bear was sitting.

Every stop a guide with Minnesota connections.

The proselytizing was consistent but almost always not oppressive.  We were offered free copies of the Book of Mormon at each stop but no one ever seemed to mind that we preferred not to take one.

This is the Temple of Saint George.  It is the first Mormon temple in the west.

The temple at Salt Lake City was begun earlier but the one in Saint George was completed first.  The building is constructed of sandstone blocks, covered with a layer of plaster and then painted white.

We were NOT invited to look inside.

We WERE given an opportunity to do a little free research on a work station in the visitor center connected to the highly touted Mormon geneology database.  It took about three clicks to locate Grosvater and all the members of his household according to the I forget which census, I think 1890, might have been 1900.  There were a couple of 20 something McDill young women living in the household is what I remember.

It was on its way outside to being way too hot again.  Getting  into the car after leaving the visitor center was unpleasant.  We decided to head back to the air conditioned motel room for a little sit down.

After a while we decided that it might be nice to get a tiny bit more outside time but that the best place to do so would be somewhere with a little shade and some greenery.  We had a really minimal chamber of commerce kind of place mat map of the city but it showed a Pioneer Park in a place that based on the places we had been to earlier in the day I was pretty sure I could locate.

It was 102F when we paused at Pioneer Park.

It was a very brief pause.  Shade and greenery seemed to be in short supply.

There was an overlook at the park which offered this view of the city illustrating the still prominent place of the temple in the profile of the city.

It's pretty here but as the FT remarked this feels more like visiting a foreign country that actually visiting a foreign country does.  The weather, the flora, the geologic setting is all so completely not what we are used to that we definitely feel displaced.

Time to go home.