Weekly Date: Exploring Salt Lake City

For the long weekend (Pioneer Day/24th of July/Days of '47/Pie and Beer Day), Tygan and I had a little excursion to Salt Lake City! Even though we've lived in Utah for a few years, we've never really adventured in that part of the woods.

We started out in Liberty Park where we enjoyed some fair food, including funnel cakes which I LOVE. Best funnel cake I ever had. Then we went to the Utah Folk Arts Museum, which was ... interesting. After a short nap on the grass, we headed to Temple Square, where we toured the Conference Center and got to look at some original paintings that they don't normally include in their tour! And then we went to City Creek Center for some shopping. We got a map of the mall, which is broken up into four quadrants, so, naturally, we believed that there were four sections to the mall laid out at the intersection of two streets. Bu we were completely baffled when we would try to walk to one of the sections to the north and would end up in a totally different section, to the east or west! It kind of felt like we were being unknowingly teleported.

Until Tygan took a closer look at the map and realized the top two quadrants weren't north, they were the second level of the mall. Oops! We had a good laugh about that.

What a flattering angle. Oh well, everybody looks great next to the Salt Lake temple, right?

That evening we enjoyed some amazing fireworks; we were so close to the edge of the park where they were being set off, I had to cover my ears for part of it. Which kind of made me feel like a five-year-old, but whatever.

Saturday we hiked Ensign peak and had an awesome lunch at Pei Wei. (Tygan got a delicious caramel chicken dish. Highly recommended.)

Ensign Peak - the hike was steep and short, like the Y, and there wasn't much shade, but the view was really great. It felt like you could see everything in Salt Lake from the University of Utah to the lake!

And we got to meet up with my former roommate, Amanda, and her new husband Steven (they got married a week after us!) at the Hogle Zoo!

They were having a dinosaur theme at the zoo, and this was a great photo-op. I called these Dino-Bites "ginger-flavored."

My favorite things at the zoo were the sea lions, the burrowing owls, and the Dippin' Dots. Tygan liked the sloth. We joined Amanda and Steven at their home for dinner, Bananagrams, and Farkle before heading back to Provo.

Yep, adorable.

So all in all I think it was a pretty good trip. Next time, I'd like to maybe check out the planetarium, and Tygan wants to tour welfare square and Gilgal Garden. Let us know of any other cool things to experience in Salt Lake that you'd recommend!