It's been a while since we've been able to play tourist in Salt Lake City, but we had a free day in order to do so on this trip. Next up on the list was touring the Church History Museum. All of the exhibits were well done and we highly recommend you visit this when you're in town.
Michelle and her boys joined us for a while, but since we arrived before them, even before the history museum opened, we took the opportunity to take a quick tour of the Family History Library next door. By checking our family tree accounts, we learned that our tour guide was one of my dad's second cousins!
"Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start." In this museum, that means with Joseph Smith's First Vision, translating and publishing the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the church, and establishing Kirtland.
That's about as far as we got, although Wayne made it all the way to the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. The rest of us headed upstairs to the children's area - a beautifully done place to have fun while learning more about temples. Theo's favorite part was dropping balls down a "house" window, but he also enjoyed building a temple, complete with a miniature Angel Moroni.
Two hours is a good limit for little boys, but before they went home, we walked over to City Creek and enjoyed lunch together.
There's no Angel Moroni on the real Salt Lake Temple right now, but there is a replica of one in the museum.
The permanent exhibit upstairs showcases memorabilia from each of the presidents of the church. It's quite fascinating. One of the tidbits of information that caught our attention dealt with President Hinckley and the first temple films. We were a bit disappointed that
Grandpa wasn't even mentioned, though!!
There's one last permanent exhibit - The Trek West - in the basement, but we ran out of time to fully explore that today. That's on the list for next time, along with whatever temporary exhibit is on display.
Before heading out, we quickly walked through the current temporary exhibit which showcased the submissions for the 12th International Art Competition. There are certainly a lot of talented people! We both quite liked "Hie to Kolob" but it's hard to select a favorite. Feel free to vote for the two you like most here.
We had parked in the Conference Center underground parking lot, expecting to pay as we exited since we weren't touring the Conference Center. What a nice surprise when the gate attendant waived us through; he said a visit to the Church History Museum counted as a parking validation, at least for him!
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