Today was pretty much drive day, but we planned to stop at two locations and drive until we got tired on the way to our next destination.
The first place was Promontory Summit, Utah to visit Gold Spike National Monument. For those of you that are not railway buffs or american history for that matter, this is the place at which the transcontinental railway was completed.
The site is where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific united to inaugurate cross-country rail travel. This happened on May 10th, 1869. We just got there a few days too early to see them re-enact the driving of the final spike into the ground. They hold a ceremony every year on that date.
The original engines have long been scrapped, but new replica engines have been built. They have updated them for safety but have kept the original look. (e.g. they didn’t use rivets because welds are stronger, but used hidden welds so you could not see them, and put in fake rivets to give it an original look.)
After watching a video about the building of the railway, we took a driving tour that drives over the same path that the railway was on. We passed a section of railroad that was built in both directions. This happened over a 250 mile course because no specific meeting point had been chosen and because of typical government inefficiency each railroad company was paid a partial amount for each section they graded. There was no incentive for them to stop grading.
After Gold Spike, we headed back to Salt Lake City. We stopped near Ogden for dinner, then headed over to our second stop; Temple Square.
We took their short 30 minute tour. Unfortunately, the Tabernacle is under restoration, so we could not tour it.
After the tour we decided to head out as far as we wanted to drive before we got tired. This took us to Price, Utah. We checked into the hotel and sat in the spa for a little while, then headed off to bed.