August 19 & 21, 2010 - Church History Library,
Oquirrh Temple, and the Riverton Family History Center
These
last few days we've been going out a lot. We went south from
Provo toward Springville out State Street which is U.S 89. On the
way, we passed this motorcycle shop. I had to snap the photo
quickly. Too bad I cut off the back end of this really cool
bronze statue of a motorcycle racer.
It reminds me of the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" about Burt Monro, a guy from New Zealand who set the motorcycle land speed record in 1967 on the Salt Flats west of the Great Salt Lake.
It reminds me of the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" about Burt Monro, a guy from New Zealand who set the motorcycle land speed record in 1967 on the Salt Flats west of the Great Salt Lake.
We spent nearly all day on two separate days at the new Church History Library that opened in 2009. There we found and copied archives of records pertaining to our home stake, Macon, GA, that dated back to 1916. Wards in the stake are mentioned as early as 1919. We copied a lot of useful historic information.
Later in the day we attended the newest Utah temple at Oquirrh Mountain (pronounced "Oh-Ker"). It's located on a hill in the southwestern part of Salt Lake valley.
The grounds surrounding the temple are well maintained and look lush for the desert.
The hill is high enough that it's easy to survey the valley from there.
You can easily see two of the other 3 temples in this valley with the naked eye. This is the temple in Draper, Utah which is also very new.
The Salt Lake Temple, downtown, is a bit too hard to see without assistance but the West Jordan temple can be easily spotted from Oquirrh Mountain.
We went from the temple to eat. When we left the restaurant we saw this interesting fruit tree in the parking lot. It was covered with bright, red fruit.
I've since learned this is a flowering crab apple called Malus Floribunda (John Downie).
There was another tree with smaller, different shapped fruit and different leaves.
There was also this bush with pretty flowers.
I've learned this is a wild rose called Rosa Canina which the English call the Dog Rose.
From there we went by the new Riverton Family History Center which is several miles south of where we were near the point of the mountain.
The Riverton Family History Center is in a very large building in a new part of a new town behind a new shopping area. There was a large Wal-Mart across the street.
Here's a closer photo of the main entrance. Maybe we'll get another visit to see what the place looks like inside. It's purpose is experimental. It's to relieve some of the traffic from the main Family History Library near temple square in Salt Lake City which receives about a 1/2 million visitors per year, quite a crowd.
If this experiment is successful the church plans to build two new centers just like this, one in Ogden and one in Provo.
The moom had risen and it was getting late in the day.
We ate a late supper at this Chik-fil-A near Riverton then headed back.
We were ready for a night's rest by the time we got home. It gets dark late here, I'm sure it's because of Daylight Savings Time. Sunset is about 8:30 or a quarter 'til 9:00.
Goodnight all!
