2025 US Trip Day 1 SLC

 Not having travelled overseas since COVID it was time to dust of the passport and make a long flight somewhere. Bindi (my sister in law) and I came up with the plan to do a church history tour in the US. So we booked our seat on the tour for May 2025 and planned our trip around that. It seemed ages ago that we booked, some time in mid 2024 and finally that day or departure arrived.

The US deemed us suitable tourists, and neither of us had any trouble getting through Border Control on our respective flights and we met up in Salt Lake City and had 5 nights at The Kimball which was just up the road for Temple Square in SLC, and ideal spot.

I enjoyed an early morning walk, I had woken up about 4am, the joys of jet lag! Out to get some melatonin, so head up the hill from our 1 bedroom apartment at The Kimball to the State Capitol Building. A very impressive building.

With lovely views. You can also see the Wasatch Mountains from nearly everywhere in the city, they look lovely with their snow capped peaks.

The McCune Mansion, just up the road from where we are staying

After breakfast we headed out on foot to explore Temple Square. This was late April, so mid spring here, the flowers were lovely, especially the tulips.

This is church headquarters

We did a tour of the Conference Centre, this is where General Conference is held each April and October

The Christus Statue

View over SLC from the roof of the Conference Centre. We got good views. There is a lot of renovation going on in Temple Square, a fair bit has reopened so we were lucky.

Inside the Tabernacle- home of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, formerly the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

This was the Assembly Building, this was one of my favourite buildings on Temple Square

 There are lots of recently installed statues around Temple Square, this was just one of them.

The  Salt Lake Temple is undergoing extensive restoration and renovation, is due to be open in 2027

We needed a little nap after lunch, so then to to try and keep ourselves awake we headed out to do some shopping. We managed a visit to Costco, Walmart and Trader Joe's. I think Trader Joe's was my favourite grocery store- you could buy healthy stuff there! I also loved their bags, I had been looking for a Walmart bag similar to this but they didn't have them. One thing off my shopping list-they are a solid box type bag that fold up. I brought 3 in the end to bring home!

Good Friday Easter Picnic

 We had our Good Friday Easter Picnic again at Lennox Gardens. The weather this time was very mild for late April which was nice. We had lots of fun as usual, plenty of food and it is so fun with the Easter Egg hunt, the kids love it and we had way too many eggs- but they didn't mind.

The annual Easter Egg hunt in the Japanese Gardens at Lennox Gardens, such an awesome spot. Photos thanks to my sister in law!

Lining up for the Easter Egg Hunt- youngest to oldest. We have to invite people with  young kids to keep the tradition alive!

Even this big kid joins in. Amy loves the hunt then re hides or gives away most of the eggs she finds.

Charlie hides the eggs now instead of looking for them. Good to have some extra helping hands.

Mia helping the baby we had with us this time to find the eggs.

I love how these kids then get together count the eggs and divide them up so everyone has the same amount. No prompting for the adults.

Amy and Sarah watching on.

Amy and Sue Head to Melbourne

 Amy and I were supposed to go down to Melbourne for Mars and Aiden's wedding in December, but due to Amy's illness we had to cancel, we headed down in March to do some of the things we were planning to do.

First stop was our most favourite Bed and Breakfast - Amberesque in Rutherglen.

Amber had asked if we would mind being guinea pigs for a cooking workshop as she was hoping to start some up- she had to twist our arm ( not!) so helped her out.

We had a great time learning how to make Turkish Pide in Amber's kitchen,

The finished product

We then sat out in the garden with our pides, pomegranate tea and our cheese and olive platter

The breakfast theme was Turkish, we had our Turkish Pides yesterday so went for the cinnamon pancake option, with peaches, pistachio, rose gelato and little pieces of blackberry Turkish delight- it was so yummy.

Before heading to Melbourne we went across to the garden shop we discovered the previous day as we wanted to make a terrarium at the Terrarium Bar. It was an amazing set up.

Good to see Amy working with plants again, we both had a great time, making a terrarium for ourselves each and a gift for some friends,

Then we headed to Melbourne, having a chocolate lunch at the Yarra Valley Chocolaterie.

We stayed 2 nights with my friends Louise and Ron in Boronia, they looked after us so well and made us feel so welcome. I forgot to take photos.

One night we caught up with  Mars and Aiden at the Vanilla Lounge in Oakleigh, They had their wedding reception in the Function Room there. It turns out Oakleigh is a Greek Precicnt, we had some great food there, and a nice time catching up with them,

Louise took us up to the Dandenongs - it was a 10 minute drive to Sassafras, where we found this lovely sculpture garden at the Tanglewood Gallery, then onto Olinda for lunch, I love the Dandenongs.

Louise and Rob had a dog called Lucky, Amy and he were good friends, it made Amy happy to have a dog to pat and brush.

On Saturday we picked Amy's friend Steph up from the train station, took her to Collectors Corner, a massive indoor plant store in Keysborough. Again I forgot to take photos, so this was one of the information signs I had taken a picture of so I could remember how to take care of those plants,

Amy and Steph

We stayed the night in Melbourne, going to the Victoria Market and the girls just catching up and hanging out. I also got to catch up with my brother Gary, his wife Arlene and Matthew.

It was a great trip, we headed home stopping overnight at Albury before arriving home in Canberra.

Tuesday Girls Head Home

 It was time to head home after a great time away exploring the area, Deb and I headed out for our last morning walk along the beach, this time on the other side of the peninsular, parking at the Surf Club where we walked along the beach down past Lake Wollumboola- which had a sea berm separating it from the ocean.

As we walked towards the lake we could see this large black blob, we were trying to figure out what it was. As we got closer we realised it was black swans, there were hundreds of them, probably a thousand or so.

They scattered and swam out into the lake as we came closer so we stayed away as we returned as they were all back in place. Turns out the lake is an important east coast drought refuge for them and they graze on the algae and sea grasses. It was quite the sight, made our morning.

Back to our villa for breakfast, pack up, visit our favourite Culburra Café and head home the back way on the Nerriga Road.

We stopped off at Tiajara Falls

With lovely views through the valley,

We had a lunch stop at Tarago

I good adult size swing that needed testing out!

Past the wind turbines on Lake George before arriving back in Canberra- another great Tuesday Girls adventure.