Ruly Holiday Road Trip: Days Six through 10, Salt Lake City, Utah

On day six of our road trip, we arrived at our primary destination, Salt Lake City, Utah, where our schedule of driving and touring was replaced with visits, dinners, lunches and general family bonding time. Respecting the privacy of all involved, you will just have to imagine how much fun we had.

Looking at my photographs, it is interesting to see how once we got to Salt Lake, my focus shifted to focusing in on people and things rather than looking at landscapes and buildings and the broader picture.

I do have a few non-confidential and organizational things to share, however. Utah tends to be a trend-setting state in matters related to domesticity and families and there were some new trends coming out of Utah that we did not see much elsewhere.

1. Oversized Christmas ornaments.

For some reason, most of the Christmas trees we saw in Utah were decorated with really large ornaments. Some were 10-20 times the size of a traditional ornament. It is a neat look that we saw in glamorous trees like the one at Macy’s Walnut Room. In classic Utah fashion, there is also a productivity edge to this method. It takes less time to decorate the tree this way and you still get the same decorated look.

2. Chocolate and Sweets Connoisseurs

Salt Lake City is still the dessert capital of the nation. Nobody does dessert like they do in Salt Lake City. The chocolates and sweets are picture perfect and sinfully sweet. Even the grocery store pies for Thanksgiving look gourmet and are about 10 times better than they are here in Virginia. We didn’t get the opportunity to do too much sweets tasting but I did get the chance to stop in a fascinating chocolate shop in Ogden, Utah. On display were a variety of Utah-made chocolates but also a selection of the best chocolates from around the world. Even the vanilla flavors were exotic. My daughter loved the “Tahitian Vanilla” marshmallows.

3. Expert Volunteer Photographers

Utah seems to have a higher than average number of highly-skilled amateur photographers. (You should see the amazing photo holiday cards that have arrived from Utah family and friends.) As I was setting up a self-timed shot of members of my family, a dad passing by asked if he could take the shot for us. We accepted and to my great surprise, he did his best to replicate the exact placement and shot framing I was trying to achieve in my self-timed shot. And then he went one step further and took an even better picture to boot! Wow! Usually I am just grateful if all of our heads are in the picture. So, if a Utahn offers to take your picture for you, accept!

4. Pollution

This is sort of a sad development in my hometown. We haven’t visited in winter in quite a while but nearly everyone we spoke with in Salt Lake mentioned “the inversion” at some point. The inversion is a unique weather effect where polluted air becomes trapped in the Salt Lake Valley during cold weather. There are now signs on the highways giving tips about carpooling and combining trips to reduce emissions. I am not sure what is to blame for this rise in pollution but one thing we have noticed is how much the Salt Lake area has grown in population in the past 10 years. On the plus side, we saw more evidence of street car lines.

5. Evolving Traditions

Utah is statistically a fairly homogeneous state with a white population of about 90%. So it was surprising to see some evidence of the state’s evolving diversity in one of the state’s longest traditions, Ballet West’s Nutcracker ballet, which I had the chance to see during its Ogden, Utah run. Adam Sklute, Artistic Director of Ballet West, has been doing amazing work to raise Ballet West’s profile. (If you haven’t seen Season 2 of their reality television series Breaking Pointe, it is definitely worth watching.)

While each year, Adam Sklute bravely tinkers with William Christensen’s time-tested choreography to keep the ballet fresh, this year, there were two key diversity changes. First, the Nutcracker Prince was danced by Joshua Whitehead, the sole African-American male dancer in the company. Second, Mr. Sklute dramatically changed the Chinese dance from a traditionally dressed Chinese character surrounded by women in Mandarin-style costumes with paper parasols to a Chinese dragon with a traditional Chinese tamer turning aerial cartwheels on a cane. It’s tough to change a tradition but these changes energized the production. In a nod back to tradition, however, the original Russian dancer choreography seems to have returned, which was wonderful because it truly is genius and the audience loved it. This Nutcracker still had a Utah feel to it but there was something new to appreciate as well. I have come to appreciate that this is probably the healthiest way to preserve traditions—not to do things the exact same way each time but to do them similarly and leave a little room for experimentation.

Each time I return to my hometown it is always a different experience. There are many things that are familiar but also so much that has changed. It is tempting to think that we have indelible “roots” in a certain place that will never change but it is probably more true that we just keep re-rooting ourselves in different places and in new relationships.

We had a wonderful visit in Salt Lake. It is always hard to say goodbye to our families and friends but the road home beckoned.