Pipe organs and Fall Foliage

10/5/19 - 10/7/19 - Boise, ID To Heyburn, ID (168 miles) 2 hours and 22 minutes, stayed 3 nights at Heyburn Riverside RV Park, $72.90

10/8/19 - 10/10/19 - Heyburn, ID. To Ogden, UT (145 miles) stayed 3 nights at Century Mobile Home and RV Park, $127.94

Salt Lake City, UT

We’re quickly headed South, yet are encountering cool/cold weather.  Seems winter is coming early this year.  The best part about these cold days is that the leaves are changing!  I’ve read that Utah is having an exceptional year for Fall foliage and I can’t wait to see it!  

Bill found in his research that the LDS Church offers free organ recitals every day in Temple Square. We can’t go in the temple because we’re not Mormon, but we can go in the Tabernacle. So for the one full day we’re here, we’re going downtown for a meal and concert.  Parking is great, because they hosted the Winter Olympics here a few years back.  And they have all the amenities completely surrounding Temple Square, sort of how the Alamo is smack in the middle of downtown San Antonio and seems so out-of-place.  The young people are very friendly and inviting and willing to share their witness and listen to other’s opinions on faith.  I don’t know much about LDS, but they do represent themselves well.  

The organ we heard had over 11,000 pipes, not all visible. Before the organist began playing, she demonstrated the acoustics in the building by dropping three pins and a nail. You could hear all of them clearly without the aid of microphones. She also told us about the pieces she’d selected, the last being from Symphony Gothique, which had many minor notes and sounded very Halloween-y.  The finale “pulled out all the stops” to really show us what the organ was capable of. It was great!  It made me think of how much Bill’s dad would have loved it.

At lunch, I munched on a burger and watched snow flurries out the window.  On our drive back north, the skies cleared and we decided to take the recommended tour through the canyon to look at leaves.  WOW!  What an awesome day!