Sunday at the Temple and Spiral Jetty

Sunday was a really really special day.

First, we got to go to the dedication of the gorgeous newly refurbished Ogden Temple and be right on the temple grounds for that lovely event. I'm seriously so excited to have a temple in walking distance from our house! I was 8 hours from a temple when I lived in Boston for 10 years off and on (the nearest temple was DC - and then they built a temple right outside Boston after I moved away). We were one to three hours (depending on the crazy traffic) from the Oakland Temple when we lived in the Bay Area. We were 20 minutes from a temple when we lived in St George (but with 5 preschoolers, it was a bit of a challenge to get to the temple as often as we'd have liked). Then we've had a closed temple right down the street most of the time we've lived in Ogden and haven't made it to the Bountiful Temple all that much. But now - wow - we've got a temple just a few blocks away and we're excited and determined to get there very regularly!

After the dedication, we took advantage of the super rare and wonderful fact that Jared didn't have bishop's duties and we went out to visit the otherworldly splendor of the Spiral Jetty at the Great Salt Lake with some of our good friends.

Here's a little info from Wikipedia about the Spiral Jetty:

Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film also titled Spiral Jetty.

Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks and water,Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long (460 m), 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake. The water level of the lake varies with precipitation in the mountains surrounding the area, revealing the jetty in times of drought and submerging it during times of normal precipitation.

Smithson reportedly chose the Rozel Point site based on the red color of the water and its connection with the primordial sea. The red hue of the water is due to the presence of salt-tolerant bacteria and algae that thrive in the extreme 27 percent salinity of the lake's north arm, which was isolated from fresh water sources by the building of a causeway by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1959.

Smithson was reportedly attracted to the Rozel Point site because of the stark anti-pastoral beauty and industrial remnants from nearby Golden Spike National Historic Site, as well as an old pier and a few unused oil rigs.

We went to visit the Jetty three years ago when it looked like this (you can just make out the outline). Of course, the kids had to follow the spiral to its center and everyone ended up pretty wet and cold but had a great time.

It was fun to go this time and see the whole jetty high and dry (that's just sand and salt out there around the jetty even though it looks like water - the water starts way out beyond the jetty).

Here's our afternoon in pictures (it was raining on the way there and looked threatening all day but it actually turned out to be the most perfect cloudy day and didn't rain on us one bit!)

We made a quick stop for bathrooms and a peak at the cool reproduction engines at the Golden Spike Historic Site where the train tracks joined together to connect the entire United States by rail:

Then we took a dirt road from there for about a half hour to the Great Salt Lake.

First we got to the skeletal remains of an old jetty for shrimping boats:

Then, just a bit further down the road, we arrived at our destination - Robert Smithson's famous crazy art installation - the Spiral Jetty:

The kids headed out to follow the jetty to the center:

And on the way they found an awesome snake:

What a creative mind Smithson had!

Here's what the ground looks like out there - salt crystal-crusted - so interesting:

The middle of the jetty!

Then we set out across the salt and sand beyond the jetty to get to the water and played and wondered in the white and pink of it all, bathed in a surreal light. It seriously feels like you're on another planet.

The salt crystals were so interesting:

 

 See how pink the water is out there?

There were some old metal spikes sticking up and the salt had stuck to them in layers for years - this is what resulted:

Jared was nice enough to give me a ride over the super-sharp salt crystals since I didn't bring the right shoes.

And Isaac was an awesome big brother and gave Liza a lift.

 

A couple final shots of the beauty:

And we found this cool old rusty thing to jump over (Thanks to my friend Emily for bringing her great camera and taking these great shots! Plus she planned the excursion. Emily is always planning fun things and we so appreciate it!)

  

And I'll close with a few more great shots by Emily:

Bali Part II - Beauty in Ubud

Wow, Bali is sure starting to feel like a dream now. But somehow (quite miraculously, I think), I'm keeping a good chunk of the calmness Bali gave me in my heart. And it's very nice.

Anyway, here's a glimpse at the second half of our Bali adventures.

So after we left the lovely villa near Candidasa,

We spent the second half of our time together enjoying the jungles, temples, stone and wood carvings, flowers, shopping, dancing, rice paddies, fish spas, and tasty cuisine of the beautiful ancient city of Ubud.

There were temples EVERYWHERE in Ubud - large ornate ones, simple small ones, you name it.

Here's the elephant cave temple:

Here's one of the many amazing temples that are around every corner as you wander through the city:

And another:

There's still a ton I don't understand and there's likely a lot I don't understand correctly since what I gathered was from the great information our various taxi drivers and guides provided in a language that wasn't their native language. But basically, the Balinese have a totally unique version of Hinduism that flourished without interference and grew to be it's own type of thing because there was so little connection with other Hindu people for a long time. The Balinese culture wasn't affected very much by the Dutch who ruled Indonesia since Bali was generally too far away from the major Dutch settlements to be much affected by the Dutch influence. So Balinese religion and culture is truly unique in the world.

Inside every temple compound, there are different smaller temples or shrines to different Hindu gods. Each neighborhood has a temple where people gather for the abundant special religious celebrations they have plus every home has their own little temples - at least three - one family temple, one ancestor temple, and one protection temple.


Here's a little temple where the owners of the rice field leave offerings to help keep their crops healthy and plentiful. I so loved these little temples that were absolutely everwhere, helping us all to constantly remember to be grateful and to keep Deity in mind.

 Everywhere we turned in Ubud, there were beautiful moss-covered stone carvings:

There were also amazingly beautiful entrances/gates/doors everywhere:

 

Here are some school-children at the fancy gate entrance to their school. Fancy gates were a dime a dozen. Love how the Balinese care about making even simple things beautiful. 

 

Our hotel in Ubud was in the heart of the jungle, right next to the sacred monkey forest. It's called Alam Indah and was full of amazing Balinese art and charm.

Here's the view from the awesome tree-house like room that Jared and I had:

Here's our room:



Here's the beautiful vaulted ceiling of our room:

Here's the outdoor living room at the hotel where we had our own little church services on Sunday:


Here's Anita at her room:

Here's the entrance to Charity's room:



And here's the entrance to mom and dad's room. Nope, they don't cut corners when it comes to wood carving.

There were gorgeous flowers everywhere you looked - by the side of the road:

Arranged nicely in stone bowls placed here and there:

Even the statues got fresh flowers:


There were fresh flower arrangements placed in our hotel room daily:


Even the sinks in the public restrooms were adorned with fresh flowers:


We ate at some gorgeous restaurants. This one was featured in the movie "Eat Pray Love" and after going in through a pretty ordinary-looking storefront, there are these amazing gardens with lovely tables, some on their own little islands. And lunch cost like $5 if you got one of the most expensive things on the menu.




The food was beautiful and tasty too. This is the vegetarian sampler of some common Indonesian foods. It was super delicious.

And here are all the ladies enjoying a special "MFME" (mothers and future mothers of Eyrealm) lunch at this super super tasty place overlooking a gorgeous ravine.

Some people tried out this "fish spa" where little fish eat off all the dead skin on your feet. You should have heard the squeals and giggles from these tough guys!

One morning, Charity, Saydi and I went for a gorgous run  on little dirt trails through some rice fields:

See the volcano in the distance?

We spent some time souvenir shopping at a big open-air market. A lot of the stuff for sale was pretty junky but we searched and found some great stuff to bring home to the kids and to the kind people who watched the kids. Plus it was really interesting just being there in the markets and observing people and bargaining for things.

One night, we were able to watch some traditional Balinese dancing - so interesting to see how different it is from the dancing we're used to. It's all about moving your eyes just right and keeping your toes and fingers flexed at sharp angles. These little girls were really cute in their bunny costumes and the older women were masters of their art. They invited some of us up to try out some of their moves - they did their best to teach us some simple stuff and it was really fun!

Stay tuned for Bali Part III which includes hiking through rice paddies to an amazing waterfall, getting caught in a downpour, biking through villages on an old volcano and more!