Tasks 'n' Touring

We needed to get the camera equipment appraised today, so we drove down into Salt Lake City where there was a shop that had agreed to do the appraisal for us.

Some of the interesting things that were in the shop:

There was a "long lens" like Dwayne's but even bigger - the owner of the store said that it actually does the same zoom as the one that Dwayne has, but collects more light so can take pictures in darker environments - good for animal shots in early morning or evening. He also told us that we could rent it for the weekend for $150....

This was a tripod contraption (technical term created by the non-camera proficient individual on the bus) that keeps the camera stabilized even when the environment is bumping around.

Boxed up version of the tripod contraption (https://www.zhiyun-tech.com/crane2).

A camouflaged camera mount.

After getting the appraisals done, since we had driven into Salt Lake City, we decided to go visit Temple Square.

We found a parking place on the street and then had to figure out how to pay...

We were in spot 3700 in zone 801 - eventually I got it figured out and we got paid. I wonder how the meter maids do their checking?

The choir was out of town... but from what I had read they were only available to be seen on Thursday evenings during their practice time, so we weren't planning to see the choir anyway.

A view of the temple,

And another...

The flowers and trees in the Temple Square were beautiful...

They look like they are continuously weeded...

And the shade made the heat of the day comfortable.

There was good signage.

When we visited the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper in August, 2017(http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2017/08/national-historic-trails-interpretive.html), we had the opportunity to "experience" pulling a handcart. It was neat to see this statue commemorating that history.

I had researched previously and knew that there were organ recitals in the Tabernacle each day at noon, with the doors opening at 11:50am. Folks were starting to line up outside entrance 11 which was the one through which we could enter. We moseyed over there but couldn't see any reason to line up, especially since we would have had to be in the sun.

Outside of the tabernacle building.

Inside of the tabernacle building.

There's the organ. We were asked not to take pictures or make recordings of the performance, so everyone was taking pictures before it started.

 We read that the organ was celebrated as 150 years old last year, in 2017. There was a special display about the organs on the site in the Museum, so after the concert, we walked over there.

This shares information about how a mechanical pipe organ works.

A screen shot of our parking meter time remaining as we were preparing to leave.

As we were leaving the Temple Square area, the directions told us to "Go East on West North Temple" - only needed to add "South" in there to make it totally confusing!

 We wanted to visit a town up in the mountains above Ogden that Dwayne had visited when he worked in Ogden several years ago... so we made our way into the mountains (east) of Salt Lake City and drove north up through the mountains.

This was just one of the viewpoints that we saw along the way - "Little Mountain Summit"

We eventually got to Huntsville, UT, which was the town that Dwayne remembered visiting.

One of the things he remembered visiting was a Monastery...

Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity

 Since Dwayne had told me about visiting a monastery, I had tried to look up information about where it was so we could go there again, but found that it was closed in 2017. We found it (there was still a sign on the main road pointing to "Monastery"), but when we got there, the road was marked as "Private", so we didn't  go into the property.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_of_Our_Lady_of_the_Holy_Trinity

The other thing that Dwayne remembered visiting in Huntsville, UT was....

The Shooting Star Saloon

They are a down-to-earth place!

Many people have signed a currency note ($1-$20 at least) and stuck it to the ceiling.

Above our table was a mounted head of a St Bernard dog (https://roadtrippers.com/us/huntsville-ut/food-drink/shooting-star-saloon).

Hmmm - if you want to create a conversion table, 1 moose = 3 people.

From Huntsville, we drove back into Ogden and to our campsite. It was a pleasant trip and Dwayne got to retrace steps from his past and share those places with me!