Day 2 - Salt Lake City

 We had not preplanned anything to do during the day today (unusual for me!)  before hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice in the evening. This morning I did a search and we decided on the Olympic Cauldron Plaza and Great Salt Lake.  

Seeing the cauldron proved to be elusive.  GPS took us to the address, but we didn't see it.  We later figured out that we actually drove right past it without recognizing it, as we were expecting something quite different.  So we gave up and headed to Great Salt Lake State Park.

At the state park we walked around and took a few pictures.  It was easy to walk right down to the waters edge.  They had a nice visitor center with a movie about the history of the lake and surrounding area.  That's Antelope Island in the distance. 

Next we decided to visit the Antelope Island state park which we had visited on our last trip here in 2019.  It is a much nicer and larger park, connected to the mainland by a 6 mile long causeway. The picture on the right shows how low the water level is, and it is reportedly up quite a bit due to all the rainfall the west received in recent months.

We did spot one buffalo on the island and Mary got this great picture of him from our car. I could not resist taking the picture on the right from the causeway, due to the wonderful reflection and how it shows the large salt flats. 

After dinner we headed to the Mormon Conference Center to hear the choir practice.  But as we pulled into the garage, the attendant told us the choir had just returned from a trip to Mexico and was taking a break!  So, once again, we did not get to hear them practice. (On our 2019 trip it overlapped with a major festival.) 

On our drive, we then saw all this scaffolding around the temple so some major restoration work is in progress.  I cannot begin to guess how much that scaffolding cost!  We then decided to see the state capital building before driving around the downtown a bit.

Overall, we had a very good day, even if we were disappointed about not hearing the choir practice. 

Tomorrow is a travel day as we head to Moab for 3 nights.