July 22nd: Sofie and maps

Today was Sofie's turn to lead us all the way to Salt Lake City, using the map and the route I highlighted for her.
From Layton to Salt Lake City one cycles on urban roads, crossing small suburbs, not knowing when one starts and when one ends. Each town has a main street and a center street - this being the center of the town. Any street north is called North 100 etc.. any street south is named South 100 etc.. Very logic. The same system works with east and west.
The route we took is on the outskirts, close to the base of the mountains. Not much traffic there!
I was amazed at how well Sofie did! She kept on cycling and hardly stopped to look on the map, but she was following the given route. Almost at the end she made a mistake and looked on the map. Then I found out she thought we were still in the beginning of the route... Good laugh there!
We had a milk shake break at Mac Donalds in North Salt Lake. Yes, you are right, this is the suburb just north of Salt Lake City. From here it was my turn again to find the hidden bike path wich takes you along the extremely busy US 89 (I was cycled it and it was so scary) - not on it! It's not the most scenic approach into the city, but it surely is the shortest.
So there we were - in the heart of the Mormon life. Our first visit, with fully loaded packs, was to the Temple, more exactly to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, to watch the movie about the origins of the Mormon church (and to sit in an airconditioned building).
We then headed to the visitor center to recieve our passes for museums and exhibits.
The last cycling stretch of that day was to our hotel - that was a bit too fancy!
Later in the afternoon we strolled to the Gateway mall: an open air mall which was constructed for the Olympics in 2002. It's a great place for windowshopping and ... getting you nails done!!