Scary thing is, it’s Part 3 and RootsTech hasn’t even started yet! I think when you travel all this way though, you have to make the most of it. We are now well and truly acclimatised to MST (Mountain Standard Time) and the hat, gloves and scarf are staple requirements on departure from the hotel. It has snowed a fair few times since our arrival on Saturday and the temperature varies from ‘pretty cold’ to a bit colder. Arriving early means that we have located a good few eateries and drinkeries to cater for our needs and yesterday (Monday), we visited the Family History Library. It was also #genealogyselfie day yesterday, so not only did we take the standard ‘cabinets of films’ photograph (right) but also a selfie in front of said cabinets!
After a slow start, I managed to make good headway on some surname study research matters. With all the professional work I do, it’s often hard to get back to my own research so it was good to trawl the records for Sillifant and other variant spellings….. like Tillifant, Pillifant etc. Of course, with the big event going on in the City, there are a fair few genies to distract us too! In fact, was introduced to a lady I’d not met before and discovered we both do surname studies and that our studies link back in Exeter in heaven-alone-knows-what-year …. I must check my trees out.
We went on a jolly jaunt yesterday afternoon – partly to get our steps up, partly to locate a hot chocolate and partly to find the grocery/liquor stores. It would be fair to say that wine in restaurants in SLC is not cheap (perhaps to discourage!), so we have opted for Option 2: buy our own and drink at our leisure in our hotel room. Having located a good restaurant on Sunday, we returned to sample other offerings before retiring to our hotel (last night was in the ‘coldest so far‘ category).
The alarms were set for an ungodly hour this morning as we were visiting the Provo City Center Temple. A free Open House visit laid on for the Ambassadors, Speakers and so forth at RootsTech. The Provo City Center Temple is a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) on the same site as the former Provo Tabernacle in Provo, Utah. The temple uses much of the external shell of the tabernacle which is all that remains of the original building after a fire in December 2010.
The fire apparently started when a spotlight was left on, too close to “combustible materials” (specifically, a wooden speaker enclosure, according to a quote on Wikipedia from the Provo City Fire Department). The story of the rebuilding of the temple is amazing with the external shell raised up on scaffold and lowered once the foundations had been rebuilt. Not my religious ‘cup of tea’ but impressive none-the-less.
Suffering from withdrawal symptoms due to lack of Wifi whilst at the temple, a visit to the local Starbucks was required on our return to the City, to complete some Heir Hunting magic to crack a case, as well as have some coffee! Now, onward to another afternoon in the FHL…. I may be some time!
