Cemeteries, family visits, state capitol, and planetarium

July 7, 2011

Lots of things happened on this day which means there are lots of photos.

First item on our agenda for Nathan, Hannah, and I was to head to Timpanogas memorial gardens to visit a few of my deceased ancestors. I have not seen the finished headstone of my grandparents and I wanted to see it on this trip. I also have not been able to pay my last respects to my two aunts that have passed within the last few years. Lucky for me my aunts are both buried right next to my grandparents.

After visiting the cemetery we headed up to see my brother's family. They just had their 3rd child a few months ago. It was so nice to see them and catch up. I think they are such a good looking family.

And of course we had to get a cousin shot.

After meeting up with Eric and Angela we drove up to Salt Lake and met up with the rest of the Culmer family at the state capitol building.

These pictures are of the House and Senate chambers.

This is a mural painting in the Senate chamber that was painted by one of Nathan's ancestors (pretty cool huh).

This is a picture of the where the governor meets with all the people that are more important than you and me. I think our tour guide called it the "gold room" because it has lots of gold in it.

And here is David goofing around with the camera in the gold room.

Here is a picture of the rotunda. For some reason, we never took a picture of the rotunda on our camera so this picture is courtesy of wikimedia commons.

Uncle Danny and the kids. I'm noticing that they like to up on Danny's shoulders.

This picture shows one of the many earthquake supports that hold up the state capitol. They can stretch up to 2½ feet horizontally with an earthquake up to the magnitude of 7.3 and will then return to their original shape. Pretty awesome!

After the capitol building we headed down to the Clark Planetarium where the kids, along with Nathan and his brothers, played around for about an hour or so. As we were getting ready to leave Nathan said "Guess who I just met? I got to meet Jake Garn." For those of you who don't know who Jake Garn is (like me) he is a former Senator from the state of Utah and astronaut. I asked Nathan if he got a picture of him and he said "Yes but not a good one." As you can tell, the picture below verifies his statement is true.

After the planetarium we headed over to the Salt Lake Cemetery to visit a few of Nathan's deceased ancestors. I realize that there is a picture of grass, but this is where Nathan's grandma is buried. She just doesn't have a headstone yet.

It was a day packed full of excursions and it was a lot of fun.