844. Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County (UT04)

The county government center was wholly and utterly disappointing. It looked like a hundred other county annexes and a thousand office buildings I had seen in my life. I feel no compulsion to castigate the current county center, but it didn’t used to be this way. Once, a long time ago …

… I would have rolled up to this gorgeous creature instead. It was once the Salt Lake County Courthouse, reminiscent of so many courthouses in Missouri and Kansas (which, knowing Mormon history, makes complete sense) and now serves as city hall. Ultimately, neither was ever going to be special. These could never be the center of political gravity when they’re so close to …

… the Utah State Capitol. As you can imagine, I was quite impressed. It was unquestionably better than New Mexico’s and at least on equal footing with Wyoming’s. Of course, it did not compare to Texas’s, but I’m sure that, by this point, you know my biases. I was impressed with the placement of the site, standing on a hill overlooking the city. I could see it loom through a canyon of buildings for miles before I drove up to its foot.

I didn’t realize it was prom season, so I didn’t expect the capitol to be overrun with prom-goers—so many girls in formal dresses and so many boys in ill-fitting suits. I didn’t hesitate to grab a Virtual on the grounds. There was also a Letterbox Hybrid based there, but that involved getting clues from various floors, and the building was closed. That made me sad because I still needed a physical cache, and that would have filled the requirement nicely. Of course (and it is a rarity to say this), for all its importance, the true political gravity probably didn’t even lie here. While one may debate the temporal power of the secular over the spiritual, being the center of a world religion unquestionably has an effect on such things.

Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify—I don’t mean to be gender assumptive), I give you the Salt Lake Temple and Mormon Tabernacle. To be fair, the Temple is a little difficult to discern beneath all the scaffolding. Much of Temple Square was torn up and in the throes of construction, either repairs or work on an underground extension. That didn’t mean it wasn’t filled with parents and babies—so many girls in identical skirts and blouses, so many more boys in ill-fitting suits, and various other lookie-loos, me not least among them. I ended up wasting some time seeking out a nearby travel bug hotel that turned out to be in a building that closed around the same time I hit town. I returned to the car and headed for a residential neighborhood just outside of downtown.

When I approached someone’s stoop, I was a little worried. I’ve never been a fan of yard caches to begin with. This one wasn’t bad—an unexpected ammo can outside the house. I signed the log and picked up a trackable. With that, my official work in Salt Lake City was done. I had one more thing I wanted to accomplish, but I ended up having to abort it since ground zero was across the street from Rice-Eccles Stadium, and the traffic led me to believe that a sporting event was about to commence. I metaphorically sped away from all the sporting muggles. I had spent too much time in Salt Lake anyway. I had other things to do and was running on a tight schedule. As soon as I was away from the University of Utah, busy and cluttered with muggles, I headed off to…