April 29 - 2018 Glendale, Utah

 

When we were in Bryce Canyon yesterday, JJ said, “how can the next canyon possibly impress us after this”.
Today, April 29th, we went to Zion National Park, and once again, we were impressed😊

 

The native Americans called Zion “up and down land”. That is a very good description of the place.

 

 

The scenic route in the park can only be seen, at this time of the year, by taking a shuttle bus (bus der kører rundt i parken).
JJ would rather drive himself, but when we got to the park, shortly after 8 am, we saw why they don’t allow people to drive around in their cars. The place was packed! It would be total chaos, if everyone tried driving and parking on the narrow route.

 Some of the things we saw:

 

 

Court of the Patriarchs - named by the Mormons (so is Zion Park)
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

We saw mule deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, and this little guy😊

 

At the start of "The Narrows"
It is a walk through a narrow canyon, through the river.
We didn't walk the narrows, but it looked like a popular place.

 

The place was really nice, but we actually were equally impressed by the drive to and from the park, on Highway 9. We are camping east of Zion, so we entered the park at the east entry. (Most people enter through the southern entry.) It was 15 miles of scenic drive, and a lot of the scenery was unique to what we have seen before. We took just as many pictures on Hwy 9, as we did on the scenic route. Here are a few chosen:

 

 

 

 

 

 Written by Mary

P.S. We just saw a commercial (tv reklame), that we will not see anywhere else but in the state of Utah. It was for a “missionary starter package”. You get 2 suits, 4 shirts, 4 ties, and a pair of shoes for $495 😊 😊



April 27-28 - 2018 Glendale, Utah

Friday, the 27th, we moved 270 miles (ca. 430 km) almost straight south from Draper to Glendale, Utah.
Halfway we stopped for gas. Right next to the gas station was a garage (værksted).
They had a guy in a golf cart driving around the pumps scouting for (på udkig efter) business.
Well, he found us!😊
After we got 2 new tires on the camper in Vicksburg, we knew we would have to change the other 2 at some point.
The guy in the golf cart spotted that the time was NOW. They were really bad, and we would probably have had a blowout real soon. They also found out why our tires on the camper are worn on the inside.
The bushings in the spring suspensions (bøsningerne i fjederophænget) were totally worn out.
So we had new bushings (this time brass instead of plastic) put in.
From the time the guy spotted us at the pump till we were on the road again: 45 minutes!!

Saturday (April 28), we got up REAL early (4:15). A lot of the national parks have “sunrise” and “sunset” points – places where it is best to see the beginning and end of the day. We have never seen either at the parks, so we decided today was the day! We drove to Bryce Canyon National Park and saw a beautiful sunrise.

 

The thing that is special about seeing sunrise at Bryce Canyon, is that the sunlight makes the rocks glow.
It was amazing and beautiful.

The first 2 pictures are taken at sunrise at Bryce Point. The next 2 are taken around noon at the same place. Notice  how different the colors are.

The park was amazing. And big - we drove 40 miles (ca. 65km) in there.
Again, we took many pictures and again, we had trouble choosing which ones to put on the blog.
Here are our choices…

 

 

Written by JJ and Mary

April 26 - 2018 Draper, Utah

April 26 was the day we went to Salt Lake City. We are both interested in culture and history, and Mary is especially interested in religion, so we had been looking forward to learning a little more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Jesu Kristi Kirke af Sidste Dages Hellige) (Mormoner). We both enjoyed the day, learned and saw lots, and came away with a very good impression (indtryk) of the city and the Mormons. (Don’t worry, we are not going to convert!)

The city is clean and orderly, and there are flowers, fountains, and landscaping everywhere. We had a little trouble getting orientated, but after that, everything went well. Temple Square was full of missionaries and volunteers, that we could ask, whenever we had a question. They were all very friendly, positive, helpful…. We got a tour of Temple Square from 2 young women. They told us history of both the square, it’s buildings, and the Mormon church.

The first Mormon church in Salt Lake City

 

 

The Tabernacle on Temple Square

We then went to one of the visitor centers to see a model of the temple (since we are not Mormons, we cannot go inside).

The Salt Lake City Temple

During our short visit in Salt Lake City we have talked to 4-5 people with Danish ancestors (forfædre).
A Jørgensen, a couple of Christensen etc. That seemed to be more than you would expect, so JJ wanted to know how many Danes emigrated to this area. We went to the Mormons family history library to find the answer. The Mormons believe strongly in the importance of family. They have built archives that contain copies of church records (kirkebøger) etc. from all over the world. They have a lot of people there, ready to help you, and a lot of archives.
We met with their Denmark specialist. He could not answer the question, but instead he showed us
their website, where you can search for your family history. And all of a sudden, we were looking at a copy of the church records from 1930, when JJ’s dad was entered in the parish (sogn) of Rostrup, Denmark.

 

 



We also went to the Museum of church history. There we found out more about Joseph Smith (founder of the LDS church), some more church history, and especially about the Book of Mormon (a book that Joseph Smith found and translated from an ancient language, “through the grace of God”). The Mormons base their religion on three books – The Old Testament, The New Testament, and The Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith

 

 

 

Finally, we went to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice (they only practice once a week, so we were glad we hit the right day). The choir has almost 400 members and is accompanied (akkompagneret) by a big symphony orchestra. It sounded very good, especially when they did  “When the Saints go Marching in” (which we did not hear in New Orleans).

Written by JJ and Mary

P.S. the people around Salt Lake City, are some of the friendliest we have met on our trip. We realize that the Mormon missionaries are friendly, to try to make a good impression (but only half of the people of Utah are Mormons). We ran into friendly people at the optometrist, the campground, the gas stations etc.  etc. It seems like it would be a nice place to live.

April 25 - 2018 Draper, Utah

As JJ wrote yesterday, we are now in the Salt Lake City area. We are very pleasantly surprised at how beautiful this area is. The city and surrounding towns are in a valley between 2 beautiful mountain ranges. So… there are going to be more mountain pictures coming on the blog. We can’t help ourselves😊

Yesterday, while JJ was at the optometrist, I was talking to one of the employees. She gave us a great tip, about an open house tour, being held at the Jordan River Utah Temple. It is a Mormon temple, that has been remodeled (ombygget), and before the dedication ceremony (indvielsen) on May 19, people from the general public are invited to see it. (Once a temple is dedicated, only Mormons can enter.)
We were excited about this, because we are very interested in the history and culture of the Mormons.

We were not disappointed when we visited today (April 25). The temple was VERY different than any place of worship we have ever been in. We learned that all Mormons have a church they belong to. This is a place like other Christian churches, where the members meet on Sundays for services.

The temple is quite different. It is made up of many rooms of varying size and purpose (forskellige størelser og formål). All of them are beautifully decorated. We especially noticed the paintings and lighting.

Lounges/sitting areas

There are many small offices and meeting rooms. There are larger rooms, called Instruction rooms, where people gather to be “endowed” (velsignet)with knowledge (viden) and spiritual power (åndlig styrke).

There are rooms for weddings – called Sealing rooms. “Sealing” a marriage is a very important thing in the Mormon church. They are very family orientated and believe that marriage not only lasts “until death do we part”, but also into life everlasting (evig liv). There were 16 sealing rooms – varying in capacity size from 15 to 150.



This is a dressing room for the bride.

There are also MANY other dressing rooms. People participating in ceremonies at the temple – baptism, weddings, instruction - wear white robes. We saw rooms with hundreds of robes hanging, and we saw hundreds of changing rooms.

There is a room for baptism (dåb) – called the Baptistry. Mormons have full body baptism. They also have a tradition, that we find strange. They can be baptized for family members, who are dead. They believe that the souls of the dead, still have a will (vilje), and can still gain eternal life (liv efter døden), through the acts of people still alive. So, the living is baptized in the dead's name, and then the dead person can choose to accept the baptism or not.

The room that looked most like the churches we know, was the chapel.

The most sacred (hellig) room in the temple is the Celestial (himmelisk) room. It is a place for quiet reflection and prayer, after you have participated (deltaget) in the other activities in the temple. We were not really supposed to take pictures on the tour, but we did. However, in the celestial room, we didn’t dare. It looked like many of the lounge areas, just bigger. And in the middle, the ceiling was very high, and there was a very large, bright chandelier hanging there.

The outside of the temple was also beautiful. It was made even more so, because of all the spring flowers, that were in bloom. It is spring in Salt Lake City! This is the first place where spring reminds us of the Danish spring. It is wonderful! We had a lot of days with “fall” last year, but this will probably be the only 3 days of “spring” we have, because soon we head south again – to warmer and drier weather.

It was good, that we enjoyed the temple so much. We were a little let down by our next 2 stops.

JJ’s brother, Per, had been to Salt Lake City some years ago, and he said we had to see the copper mine just outside of town. We were interested, so we drove out there. Unfortunately, the visitors center was closed (it had been ruined by a rock slide (stenskred) a few years ago), and no visitors were allowed on the site. We saw what we could from the road, but we were disappointed that we couldn’t see more.

We drove to the Great Salt Lake. We had heard from the locals, that it wasn’t much to see, and most of them didn’t go there often. But, we wanted to see it, since we are in the area. The locals were right! The lake itself is like any other big lake. I like water, so it was nice to see…from a distance. There were hundreds of small brine flies (små fluer på størrelse af bananfluer) all over the place, and they were very aggressive (they bite!!!!). So we took some quick pictures and left!

This afternoon, we drove up into the mountains. There are 2 valleys near our campground. There are several ski resorts in the valleys. It was a very nice drive. Here are some mountain pictures😊

Grey mountains - for a change

One of the ski resorts

Written by Mary