Travel to Salt Lake City and Northern Utah

Travel with Amateur Traveler Podcast

In this episode of the Amateur Traveler Podcast, host Chris Christensen interviews Nathan Brennan about a summer road trip through Salt Lake City

Key takeaways

• Salt Lake City is preparing for the 2034 Winter Olympics with major infrastructure updates and renovations to iconic sites like the Salt Lake Temple.
• Temple Square in Salt Lake City is free to visit and offers a rich historical experience, including an upcoming open house from April 2027 to October 2027.

Main topics

• Summer road trip itinerary through Northern Utah
• Salt Lake City's history and Temple Square

Notable quotes

"You definitely get an elevated view of Park City itself." – Nathan Brennan on Utah Olympic Park.

Conclusion

Nathan Brennan paints Northern Utah as a region where history, nature, a

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things finance, like which travel cards earn their keep, and which are just heavy, shiny metal. The quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe the credit card. planning group trips that won't ruin your budget or your friendships. If you haven't heard the story about friends who won't speak to each other after a one-week vacation together, buy me a Diet Coke sometime and I'll tell you. The nerds at NerdWallet know this stuff better than me, and that's why I feel great about recommending the Smart Travel podcast. After all, we nerds have to stick together. Travel smarter and spend less with the help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (0:57) Hey, it's Christopher Kimball from Milk Street Radio. Sounds like I'm bragging, and I am. We're the number one most downloaded food podcast in America. You know, Milk Street Radio travels the world in search of the very best food stories. You'll hear about smuggling eels on the black market, the secret intelligence of plants, and insider tips to eating in Paris. And every week, listeners call in with their toughest culinary mysteries. Discover a world of food stories by searching your podcast app for Milk Street Radio. Speaker 3 (1:26) Amateur Traveler episode 1013. Today, Amateur Traveler talks about mountains and hiking, temples and pioneers, bison and fry sauce as we go to Salt Lake City and northern Utah. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. Let's talk about northern Utah. Speaker 3 (1:50) I would like to welcome to the show Nathan Brennan from BrennanFitnessAcademy.com. And Nathan has come to talk to us not about fitness, although I'm sure he's capable, but about Salt Lake City and Northern Utah. Nathan, welcome to the show. Speaker 5 (2:04) Thank you for having me. Speaker 3 (2:05) And you are from the Northern Utah area, but not Salt Lake City per se. Speaker 5 (2:12) Yes. So I'm like the halfway point between Salt Lake City and Provo in an area called Saratoga Springs. lehigh utah area there so excellent Speaker 3 (2:22) and why should someone go to salt lake city Speaker 5 (2:26) Well, Salt Lake City is a fast and growing city in the United States and has a lot of opportunities for people to visit. And we're recording this here in July of 2026. The 2034 Winter Olympics will be here in Salt Lake City. In previous, it was in 2002 and it was a success. Then in 2002, they're going to bring back in 2034. a lot of excitement and hype in the local community of bringing the world back for the Olympics in the wintertime. Speaker 4 (3:00) Excellent. Speaker 3 (3:01) It's hard for me to think about eight years out and what I will be doing, but I can imagine there's a lot of preparation work that's going in Salt Lake City. What are you going to recommend for us for an itinerary? Speaker 5 (3:13) Now, Utah in general, and especially northern Utah, has four seasons. I'm going to recommend more of a summer itinerary because I'm a little biased with the outdoors and the hiking, not much less the skiing. We're going to kind of go starting in Salt Lake City as our starting point. We're going to land in Salt Lake City International Airport. And I'm going to be talking about this in depth about the airport. At this recording here in July of 2026, they renovated the airport itself in 2020. And when you land in Salt Lake City, it's a lot more updated for technology and just more passenger friendly. They just recently opened a direct flight from Salt Lake City to Seoul, South Korea, Lima, Peru, and many more. And so it's having a larger footprint throughout, not just in the world, but also domestically. And in the airport, it is very clean, immaculate of itself. And for visitors who are coming, there's two concourses. There's concourse A and concourse B. When you land on concourse B in the airport there, Expect to do a lot of walking from that Concourse B along the way. There's no trains or any kind of monorail like you see in big major airports, but they kind of make a joke inside that you're getting your steps in and going through underground in the airport. It's mainly a Delta Airlines hub, so you most likely are going to be flying there, but they also have United, American, and those airlines to fly into Salt Lake City. Speaker 4 (4:50) Okay. Once we land Speaker 5 (4:52) into Salt Lake City, we're going to go straight into downtown Salt Lake City. We're going to be hitting what's called Temple Square. Speaker 3 (4:58) Now, Temple Speaker 5 (4:59) Square is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where its headquarters are located in Salt Lake City, known as the Mormon Church or the LDS Church. In this episode, I'll refer to it more as like the Latter-day Saints or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There's a lot of history in Temple Square that has taken since 18... 50s or so of that area. The great thing about Temple Square itself, it is 100 % free to visit the Speaker 3 (5:28) grounds Speaker 5 (5:28) there. The main attraction is the Salt Lake Temple. It took 40 years to build that. It took until 1893 when it was fully built and dedicated for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to visit. At the time of this recording here, it is currently closed. While they're doing a lot of renovations of keeping up to date with the current landscape of keeping a long lasting building. So if there's any earthquakes or anything like that, the great thing about this is they're having an open house starting from April 5th to October 1st of 2027. This is a 100 % free open house and is open to everyone, whether you are a member of the church or you're not. Once it is dedicated, it will be dedicated by the president of the church, and it's only access to members of the church that can go to worship and to be able to do services like if you read in the Old Testament, like Solomon's Temple as an example. In the area of Salt Lake City itself, there are three other temples that are in full operation. But the Salt Lake Temple is the main icon of the church, which Speaker 3 (6:46) you might Speaker 5 (6:46) have seen on the internet or maybe you have visited before. I will say as well, in Temple Square, there's also two other important buildings in that area that has some history. One is the tabernacle. The tabernacle was used for a lot of church meetings, what was called general conference, where the whole church can watch a broadcast or in person of church leaders speaking. Speaker 3 (7:09) Now, Speaker 5 (7:10) at this time, It is not being used more as a conference, but more for what used to be called the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but they renamed it to the Tabernacle on Temple Square. So if you've ever seen anything of the choir, of the church singing, that's where they kind of do some performances there or some other special events they do there. The next building is going to be the assembly hall, which is more of a historical. It's not being currently used for like church things, but just to the historic of the earlier members of the church who immigrated there. With Salt Lake City itself, it's a high elevation as well, roughly around 4,500 feet above sea level. So it's higher elevation that you would find than other parts of the United States. Hence, that's why it's known for its mountains and the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2034. So for those who are coming to see the open house, millions of people are going to be visiting this. So you want to make sure you plan accordingly. But again, it's 100 % free to come and visit there. But it is based on a time entry ticket that you'll be able to visit the Salt Lake Temple there. And the great thing about it is it's a very friendly place for visitors to come all throughout the world. And there's also outside of the Temple Square, there is a conference center where church leaders speak and visitors can come and hear performances or just sermons or talks they have. And so the conference center was built in 2000, just right across the street from the Salt Lake Temple there. Speaker 3 (8:43) Okay. Speaker 5 (8:44) Next in Salt Lake City, we're going to go up the hill, up to where the University of Utah is at. The university itself, it is a state-run school and they have a very well-known medical school. And one of the great things about it is that for a lot of people who come, who are those who are local that want to get a degree, there's a lot of people that has well-known graduate degrees there. With the University of Utah, there is a school down south called Brigham Young University, also known as BYU, which is down in Provo, which we'll talk about in a later part of this episode here. But the two schools I'm emphasizing is that there's a lot of history with the schools as rivals in sports competitions. academics, and so forth. And so if you ever watch a college football game between BYU and the University of Utah, there's a lot of bad blood and just contention of the rivalry itself, divine church versus state, with BYU being a religious affiliated school with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the University of Utah being a state-run school. Above the University of Utah, I'm going to recommend a hike that you get great views of the Salt Lake Valley. It is called the Living Room Trail. You go up above the medical school of the University of Utah. It's a moderate hike, I should say. And the reason why they call it the Living Room, there is flat rocks that once you get to the top of the trail, you'll lay back and sit and look at the views throughout the Salt Lake Valley. It could be a really popular place in the summertime. because of its unique feature of the trail it offers and looking through the whole valley there. Making sure that I recommend carrying some water there because it can get pretty hot here around 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime when doing this. So plan accordingly to have water and some hiking snacks and also some sunscreen as well. We're going Speaker 4 (10:43) to go next to This Speaker 5 (10:44) is the Place Heritage Park. Now, Utah has numerous state parks throughout the state. This one is right pretty close to the University of Utah. And what This is the Place Heritage Park is, it's pretty much the history of the early pioneers arriving the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, coming from the state of Illinois. Speaker 5 (11:10) you will go back in time and what life was like for these early pioneers of carrying pancart wheels and just think of kind of like the Oregon Trail from those people going out west. There's a lot of activities you can do. You can do horseback riding that are guided by experienced wranglers and horses are available at every skill level for a family or for individual. And when you kind of go through this heritage park itself, you'll learn more about the history and get a little bit of what time was like in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s of what Salt Lake City was like there. Speaker 3 (11:50) And how long do you recommend for a visit of the This Is The Place? That sounds like a strange sentence. Speaker 5 (11:57) I recommend about half a day. And three hours could be plenty. But I would say about half a day there. You could spend a little bit more than that. But from my experience, it's been like a three or four hour type of event. It is a lot of family friendly events you can do there. Dressing up as pioneers or just knowing like being like an... a village would it look like, but you get that cultural sense there of what life was like in the 1800s. Got it. Next, we're going to go back down into downtown Salt Lake City, and I'm going to recommend what's called City Creek Center. This is going to be across the street from Temple Square. This was built back in 2012. It's a big mall. They keep it really clean. They keep it well-furbished. And the City Creek