We visited Salt Lake City for a few days on our way to Idaho. My idea was to experience a rehearsal of the Tabernacle Choir in its home space. It was also a good opportunity to clean-up and stock-up. We all got haircuts, even (especially) Gracie, made a few pilgrimages to Costco and Walmart (the patron saints of the RV community), and got to know the place a little bit. All good!

The trip

As we were leaving Panguitch, I told Ms. Google Maps to avoid sending us on highway routes. We had US-89 taking us on a nice-looking ride, and Ms. G kept shoving us toward I-15. Once I put a stop to that, we rumbled along on our preferred route and found ourselves very shortly at the boyhood home of Butch Cassidy. Those of you in my generation no doubt remember the movie with Paul Newman as the swashbuckling outlaw, and his sidekick Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid? Seems as though Mr. Cassidy spent some formative years in this little cabin on the outskirts of Panguitch, Utah. And a dedicated Director of the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation saw to it that the property was restored and maintained to commemorate this local celebrity.

As we were getting ready to leave, a group of ATV’ers from the area drove into the parking lot. In talking with one of them, we found that she was a member of an ATV group in a neighboring town that had worked on the renovations to the property.

A little further down the road we came to this lovely lake stretching out along the arid land. We came to the entrance to Piute State Park, and found this is Piute Reservoir.

Our backroad route to Salt Lake City eventually took us past Utah Lake, a very large natural freshwater lake with an enormous amount of development surrounding it. We noticed that the lake is a very unnatural color, almost appearing pearlescent on the surface. We saw no boats on or around it either. The lake has water quality issues that are the focus of a lot of research. Hopefully action can be taken to restore the water to a healthier level. It was quite surprising to see this after traveling through so many beautiful places for so many weeks!

Arrived!

We made it to our campsite in Salt Lake City for the next few days, finally. The next day we got Gracie to a groomer, who did a wonderful job getting her all prettied up, and we found some excellent barbecue for lunch, and a Trader Joe’s, and a Costco (what else??).

The choir

That evening, we made our way to Temple Square, the home base of the LDS church, where the Tabernacle Choir rehearses on Thursday nights.

The conference center is new and somewhat replaces, or augments, the original tabernacle. I don’t have a photo of the tabernacle, but here is some good information about it. While it is an architectural and acoustical marvel, its seating capacity of 3,500 is clearly limited compared to that of the conference center. Still, it would have been great to hear the choir in its original home, but it was amazing to hear it in its new surroundings too!

The choir performs a weekly live television program on Sunday mornings. The first hour of the rehearsal was spent working on the music for the week’s broadcast, with the full orchestra and the organist present. You can see that most of the choir is singing without musical scores, from memory. They are focused intently on the conductor. And it is amazing to hear so many voices truly singing in ensemble, with a degree of cohesion difficult to achieve in groups one tenth their size, or even less.

Those of us in the “audience” (remember, this was a rehearsal, not a concert!) were allowed to photograph and video. Here are a few samples of the sound.

After an hour of rehearsing, the agenda changed. The orchestra left, and the choir and conductor worked on learning new music for future weeks. Here, I chuckled to recognize some of the same admonitions from the conductor that I’ve shared with choirs I’ve led in the past. Errors in diction, early or late entries, and such were caught and corrected. I was also surprised that the conductor was his own rehearsal accompanist. I thought it would be hard to do that with such a large group, but he was clearly comfortable with it, and the choir was too.

The choir completed the conductor’s agenda ahead of time, and was granted an early dismissal. We all went down to the parking garage and drove off into the night. And then our adventure started.

Long way back

The utility company was working on the gas mains under the streets and there were detours everywhere. GPS was no help, as it was unaware of the traffic changes. We zigged and zagged all over the place trying to get back to camp. We were about three blocks from our goal without realizing it when I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions.

As soon as I stepped into the building I knew something was wrong. There were people, especially one individual, at the counter behaving very strangely. Des was out in the truck waiting for me and she noticed a lot of strange behavior out there too. Strange little packages were changing hands. And the employees inside were clearly wishing I wasn’t there asking how to travel three blocks down the street. Once they straightened me out and I left, we got out of there as fast as we could. A 5 minute trip had taken almost an hour! We were extremely relieved to be back to our home on wheels.

Ensign Peak

We did manage to get in a nice hike while we were in Salt Lake City. Ensign Peak is a geologically and historically significant location on the northern edge of the city. It is the spot where the first Mormon pioneers viewed the layout of the Salt Lake Valley and began to plan the city they would build there. The climb is steep but not terribly long, and the views are very rewarding.

The lake

After our visit to Salt Lake City, we made one more stop in Utah before continuing on into Idaho. The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge is a sanctuary carved out of the northern reaches of Great Salt Lake. It has a 12 mile auto route through it that offers beautiful views of the lake and some of the wildlife that travel through it on their way north or south.

And that completes our tour of Utah so far on this trip. I can’t believe that I have never spent time there before, but am very glad I got to see as much of it as I did. I hope I have the opportunity to get back there to explore more one of these days.