Any recommendations for Salt Lake City?

[thewayne]

Russet and I will be there for part of Wednesday and Thursday next week and I'm looking for good restaurants and such. Also any good used CD or book stores.

I think we'll be near the university center, but we're driving, so moving about isn't an issue.

Thanks!

Comments

[disneydream06]

No clue here.
I've never been to Utah.
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

We went there when I was a teen, probably around '78.  I still have some of the 35mm slides that I took at the Salt Lake and the Mormon Temple Visitor's Center.

[disneydream06]

Cool. :)

I have my dad's old slides. from way back when.
I should get them out and look at them some time. :)

[acelightning73]

I stayed as far aways as I could from the Temple. I had expected Salt Lake City to be a grim theocracy, but it wasn't that bad. And after three days we were able to get back on I-80 and resume our trek to San Jose (where my son was going to grad school at Stanford). To do so, we had to come over the Donner Pass. I got very dizzy walking from the car to the building with the rest rooms at the top of the pass. I don't do too well at eight thousand feet altitude.

[thewayne]

We live at 9,000', the observatory my wife works at is 9,200'.  Several years ago my parents came to town and I was going to drive them around the very rural Texas where my mom grew up.  I told them they had to stay in Alamogordo, about 4,500', and we'd meet them there for dinner and I'd pick them up for the tour.  I just didn't want them having problem up here.  Russet did the same when her parents came to town for their last trip.

[acelightning73]

Most of my ancestors lived near seacoasts.Sea-level pressure is what I need. Once we got down to the level of the Pacific, I was fine. (And then our son took us to a beach/amusement park , and I hiked all the way down to the tide line to dip my feet in the Pacific, because I hadn't done so in Australia. My ancestors mostly came from the British Isles, the ones who got across the ocean stayed in New England, and I grew up within sight of the skyline of Manhattan. The mountains we had to go over to get to the beach were where the Heinleins had a house designed by Virginia, but we didn't go anywhere near it. (As we drove up, the afternoon fog bank or cloud layer began to spill over the top of the ridge, making a very interesting scenic effect.)

[thewayne]

I remember when I was at the Grand Canyon about 20 years ago.  I think it was mid/late afternoon, sun was still well-up.  And a cloud in the canyon hit the wall, and began spilling over the rim, making for a ground fog.  It was a very cool effect! For the most part, we don't have much in the way of sharp mountain ridges up here, so something like what you saw doesn't happen much here.  Sunday, my wife and I went out, and on returning the entire eastern sky looked like looming rain clouds.  But that was on the eastern side of the ridge, and there was no telling if they'd get enough pressure to cross the ridge and rain on us.  Hasn't happened yet.  My wife thought it might be an early monsoon pattern, she's fairly good at judging weather - something that comes with being an astronomer.

[acelightning73]

That's the only place I've ever seen fog/cloud coming over a sharp ridgeline like that. Around here, fog is, you wake up in the morning and the radio traffic report tells you of major jams on your way to work because it's so foggy that people are getting into accidents.

I'm a bit of a weather geek myself - weather is a branch of science a young child can learn about - and also an aviation geek and an astronomy geek (astronomy or meteorology are the two most frequent "first sciences" for obnoxiously bright kids. We have an annoying tendency to look up at the sky a lot.) I can smell when it's going to snow soon, and it smells different from rain.

[thewayne]

I haven't noticed imminent snow smelling different, if I remember I'll try to pay attention to that this winter.  I can usually tell by the look of the clouds.  At least here - no idea if snow clouds look different from a lower altitude.  We have a lookout point that lets you see to White Sands and the Organ Mountains, a good 70 miles or so.  And I have photos of a cloud layer filling that valley starting just below Cloudcroft.  It's always interesting driving down in weather like that.  When I get my photography web site back up, I'll try and remember to send you a link to that one photo in particular - my hosting service changed the IP addresses on some of my sites and didn't tell me in advance!  Now I have to update info on my domain registration site, and just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

[acelightning73]

I don't know how to describe it. When the air is damp and getting ready to rain on us, it just smells wet. The smell of approaching snow has a bit of a musky or pungent undertone to it. Almost like how very cold air tricks your nose into thinking you're smelling menthol or mint.