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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1722998" data-attributes="member: 2205">The Great Dyal Vacation of 2004 Trip Journal Entry #14: July 15thAfter again, attempting to sleep in for a while, we got up, got dressed and made our way out of the hotel.  Our plan was, since it was the only day without any real things we "had to do" that we'd take the kids to downtown SLC and show them the touristy things, as well as try to go up Provo Canyon to Sundance or something, so the kids could see some real mountains, for the first time in living memory.  Of course, by about the time we got to the "point of the mountain" where you go over a little pass-like feature and move from the Provo Valley to the Salt Lake Valley, we got a call on our cell phone from my family, who wanted to hook up with us.  Turns out they didn't really have any plans other than hang around with Grandma and Grandpa (my dad's parents, and we wouldn't bring our kids to see them -- they're in their late 80s now) for an hour or two in the morning, so they were perfectly content to just piggyback on our plans.  My youngest brother, though (the one getting married) recommended we check out Big Cottonwood Canyon rather than Provo Canyon, because we'd already done Provo and he thought the scenery was actually better going up Big Cottonwood anyway.So, we got downtown, parked, and went to go see the Conference Center, which was closed because it was the 75th Anniversary of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (I think) and there was a big to-do about that.  Barred on that front, we went to Temple Square across the street and poked around, showing the kids the temple, the visitor's centers, the brides wandering around all over the place getting their pictures taken, and all that good stuff.  Lots of fun.  Of course, being a Mormon family ourselves, it wasn't just touristy; there was a lot of stuff that had more meaning to that for us, so it was a great opportunity to teach the kids with some very nice visual aids, which is unusual.We then went and got lunch at the food court in the ZCMI center mall; I had Schlotsky's because it's hard to get that here in Michigan (I have to drive 45 minutes to get to the one Schlotsky's in all of Metro Detroit; what's the deal?  I thought like half of the population here was supposed to be of Polish descent...)  Then family started wandering in; my parents, my sister, Joseph and his wife, and Samuel and his fiancé Vicki.  We kicked around the mall a little bit; there was a pretty fun bookstore nearby that had Great Illustrated Classics(tm) books for $2 each, so we picked up a few for the kids to actually pick up a little culture.  Although I think they went more for the War of the Worlds type of stuff than the Great Expectations fare, that's fine; so did I as a kid.We then took the loop around to the north end of SLC and hopped off on Big Cottonwood Canyon, which truly was more scenic than Provo, in my opinion.  Great, massive sheared walls of forested rock rose all around us as we wound through a narrow ribbon of a road, not daring to go more than about 40 mph due to the sharpness of the curves.  We found a place to park at a little park (heh heh) area, then we hiked on a trail up to a waterfall; we went a good five miles, I'm guessing.  The youngest kids were sleeping in the car with Grandma, who never did have much interest in that kind of thing.  The older kids (Spencer and Jessica), on the other hand, thought it was one of the most exciting things they had ever done.Later we went to the new apartment Samuel and Vicki were going to have, and then we decided to go to Black Angus because Samuel had some coupons.  By this time, we had lost my parents and my sister, who was going to the airport to pick up Michael, Margaret and their baby Madeline.  So Joseph, Brittany, Samuel, Vicki, and then Julie and I with our four kids all went and went into some kind of food shock; I've never had so much food in my life, I don't think.  Not only did we not order anything for any of the kids, choosing to just feed them from our appetizer platters and parts of our entree, but we still had tons of food left over.  Seriously, folks, the amount of food we bought for $30 was unreal.  I don't know how those folks can continue to print those coupons.Of course, by now it was late (and we were two time zones west, so it was really even later) so we finished off the day and went back to the hotel to sleep.</blockquote>

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