Saturday morning, after a nice night’s sleep at a hotel in Salt Lake City, the fam visited the Family History Library (genealogy library) in Temple Square. I had kind of planned this on a whim when I realized we’d have a few hours before picking up my mother at the airport at noon. The library opens at 8am on Saturdays and we got there just after opening. The on-street parking is free and at that time on a Saturday morning, available. Yay!
The place was unbelievable. As we walked in we were greeted by a gentleman at a HUGE desk. He gave us “First Timer” name tags and transferred us to another person who hand guided us to using everything – after we watched a short movie detailing the facility in all its awesomeness. There are 7 times the volumes of the Library of Congress and they have vaults built 600 feet under a huge mountain. Every day their workers add data that is gathered from all over the world.
The girls were set up with their own computers and games to keep them busy and Brad and I sat down to start digging. Brad was super lucky – someone else had already done most of his Rush lineage and he was able to track back to – I kid you not – Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, first Surgeon General, Father of Psychology, first president of the University of Pennsylvania hospital.
My mother’s side of the family is mostly from North Carolina, which is one of the least complete databases they have. I made it to my great grandparents but lost the trail there. On my father’s side I think I found information about my grandmother, but I didn’t have her or her parents’ full names correct and I got stuck there, too. Rats. I just sat beside Brad’s coolness and ogled each new member he came across, all the way back to the 1400’s in England.
The genealogy library is one of the coolest things I’ve seen. It doesn’t matter who you are, this is one fabulous, well-run place. I would love to spend a few days there in the future, especially after they get some more data from the North Carolina folks. Salt Lake City was a really nice place, the people were super friendly, it was inexpensive and it was organized. Here are some pictures of what we found:
We got my mom at the airport (a mere 4 miles from the library). Even the airport was awesome. They had a huge waiting lot outside the main airport drag. It had ginormous signs that would tell the incoming flight times and whether the people were ready to be picked up yet or not. Way cool. THEN, once you start to the baggage/pick up area there’s a center island with numbered sections so those people flying in can just go to a section, call their ride and tell them at which number to find them.
The truck appropriately rearranged to permit the extra body, we got rolling right along and headed to Arches National Park.
Arches has over 2000 arches within the park. I think we saw maybe 10, but of course we were on the drive-through-see-what-we-can mode of travel. We’re not going to be hiking with my 67 year old mother and 9 & 11 year old girls, so driving is the most effective way to see all this stuff.
We did have to get out and walk up to this arch. It was absolutely huge and took some time to climb up to it. From the other side of the ledge it was a straight drop down, down, down. Creepy!
Can you see the tiny people on there? 
We drove some more, saw some more and were pretty impressed when we drove to our little cabin at the Arches Viewpoint Camping & RV.
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