I didn’t sleep well last night. There is a lot of light
through the big bay wall of windows. The Mormon Temple a block away is lit up
like the Hollywood sign. The mattress has a hole in the middle and it kept
sucking me down and I kept crawling out. It is a beautiful property though. We
got up about 6:30am and lolled around in a leisurely fashion until 8:15am and
time for our breakfast. We went down to the dining room to find one other
couple seated. The hostess asked us to help ourselves to hot beverages and
offered a variety of juices. Clay took apple peach passion. It smelled and
tasted just like a fresh peach. She also asked how we like our eggs fried. We
told her and she left. So, you get what they are serving for breakfast or go
without evidently. The dingbat girl that checked us in yesterday told us to
sign up for hot breakfast, “We only serve hot breakfast.” We weren’t sure
exactly what she meant by that emphatic statement but I guess that is what she
meant. They are cooking a hot breakfast and if you don’t eat it you aren’t
getting a bowl of cereal or yogurt instead. This is all conjecture on my part
because we didn’t test it and didn’t see any of the other 6 people who came in
challenge it either. So, she brought us each out 2 fried eggs to our order with
2 slices of bacon, 4 melon slices and 2 pineapple slices. Then she brought us
each another plate with 3 slices of thick French Toast and 6 berries. 3
raspberries and 3 blackberries. She also brought out a small pitcher of maple
syrup. It was all good and we ate everything but the melon slices. It was a big breakfast, a two-fer!
We walked through City Creek Park with the rats and homeless
people then through the Brigham Young Historic Park, for some reason the rats
didn’t come to this side of the street. We were still disturbing the homeless people though. They have some very nice water features
through downtown Salt Lake City using City Creek. It goes under the streets and sidewalks and
then re-emerges through rocky channels, in streams as a work of art about
pilgrim agriculture, as waterfalls and fountains, etc. It is very well done and
certainly much more pleasant than just ditching it under the surface.
We took
the hourly tour of Temple Square from the flagpole at 11am. There were about 15
people in our group. If you stop moving in Temple Square or sit down anywhere
in the gardens or even stand still and make eye contact. You will be accosted
by a missionary. “Where are you from?”, asked with a big smile. It seems
innocuous enough. How can you take offense? But that is just the softening
opening. After being asked about 20 times in the past 20 hours (8 of which I
was asleep in bed!) I was starting to get snappish when asked! I felt bad about my
responses but honestly they ran us off out of there. I told Clay it is their
space and they are making the most of the audience that comes, how can you
fault them for that. It must work. We barely managed to make it through the
tour before bolting a few minutes early to go to the organ concert. Once the
parents with restless toddlers and babies left it was enjoyable.
After the concert, we hightailed it out of Temple Square with our heads down and went to lunch. We ate at Lamb’s Grill, the oldest restaurant in Utah. Still at the same location. It was a big and art deco-styled place. Clay had a Cobb salad with a Jackson Hole Orange Cream Soda and I had a Philly cheesesteak with house made chips. We shared a famous rice pudding. It seems that Utah has a high per capita diet of Jell-O products and they like their puddings. It is my understanding that the old restaurants cook their puddings the old fashioned way and don’t use Jell-O though. We walked through City Creek shopping center to see the dancing fountains in front of Nordstrom then on through to Harmons Market. I had read that it is an old independent downtown grocery. It was new. It was very appealing and we each had a small gelato before leaving for our hard slog back uphill.
When we got up 29 stairs to the Inn on the Hill’s front porch, Clay
stopped and sat and I went in and got cold drinks and iced brownies to have
while we watched a storm rolling across in the distance before snowcapped
peaks. In doing so, I asked for glasses of ice and instead got offered a bucket
of ice and 2 paper coffee cups. OK. Now we have a little ice anyway! Clay is napping now. We plan to get in the car
to drive out of downtown for dinner at Ruth’s Diner. It is out in Emigration Canyon. It is the 2nd
oldest restaurant in SLC and has famous chocolate malt pudding. I’m looking
forward to that! If I go to sleep now, I won’t get up and go out to dinner. So,
I may go down and play some billiards.
Well, I am awful at billiards so I came back up and rousted
Clay out of bed. He beat me soundly 3 out of 3. We left for dinner after 5pm.
We got to Ruth’s Diner just in time to get a table, it seemed. We got seated in the
original trolley car section. It was cool. The floor was slanted though and the
aisle between the tables was very narrow and it was loud in there. The space
was so narrow that when the guy at the table across the aisle from us pounded
his Tabasco bottle on the table to get it going, that it shot up in the air and
several drops of hot sauce landed on Clay. He looked around startled and wiped
off his head. Then I pointed out the big red splotch on his shirt! He loves
that shirt. Neither water nor a Tide stick got it out, but he washed it with
Woolite at the Inn and got it out. Whew! He was just glad a drop didn’t hit him
in the eye. They had outdoor seating but it was still raining a little and that
was too risky. Clay had a local draft, a salad and Cajun spiced trout. I had a
salad and chicken fried steak. We each had a chocolate malt pudding. Clay was
glad he had ordered his own and I really liked it too, but I was thinking I was
so stuffed that I wished we were sharing. We filled the gas tank and washed the
windshield on the way back to the Inn so we’re ready to go tomorrow. We also
made sure we parked in the upper guest parking area off Hillside. That is a
level entrance to the first floor of the Inn on the Hill and requires only 21
steps!
Tomorrow, we drive to see Antelope Island in the Great Salt
Lake and Golden Spike, where the transcontinental railroads met. Then we cut
through Idaho on our way to Grand Teton National Park. We’ll be the next 2
nights at Signal Mountain Lodge. Clay just read from the Antelope Island State Park
website that they have a plague of biting gnats right now that are immune to
bug spray and that if you visit you should wear mesh netting. We decided we’d
just go and not get out of the car or open the windows. We’ll see how much we
can see like that! Hopefully, we won’t get a car full when we have to open the
car to pay our entrance fee! Fingers crossed this is the only place with a bug
problem too!
