What a different experience we are having compared to last year. Not that last year was bad. But we spent most of RootsTech 2018 either in a fog due to brain overload or nearly passed out as a result of the crush of people. And the lines. Those lines!
I must congratulate the organizers of RootsTech 2019. You listened. Picking up our badges and checking in was a breeze. Less than 5 minutes. The only mistake we made was entering through one door and exiting another which resulted in a nice looooong walk around an entire city block to return to our hotel.
Our hotel pick was a shot in the dark. The Salt Lake Plaza is not so ritzy but I highly recommend it. You can't beat the location - across the street from the Salt Palace Convention Center where the conference is being held. There's a restaurant next door with an inside entrance so you don't even have to go outside. The Family History Library is just steps away! Our room has a coffee maker, microwave, and a refrigerator!!! Awesome! We've saved a ton of money on meals because we are able to store leftovers for later! Our only complaint was that we thought the bathroom door was dirty. It looked like someone had splattered some mess all over it. Turns out that's partly true. It was a bleach spill not dirt. And, finally ... THERE IS A WORKING HOT TUB! (I kind of blew it with the airport hotel in Hartford, so it's nice we can actually use the suits we dragged along.)
Maybe the smartest thing we did this year was to arrive early on Sunday. We arrived at the hotel around 1:00 p.m. then went across the street to check in to RootsTech. In. Out.
We decided to walk to the mall to grab some dinner. Then we visited the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I had been there in 2014 and thought Scheryl would enjoy seeing the beautiful building. That turned out to be a great idea - we were treated to a grand tour of the whole building!
We stayed to watch a pretty informative movie about the 40 year-long ordeal of getting the Salt Lake City Temple built.
By then it was well after 8 and time to head back to the hotel. We had been up since 4 a.m. and our bodies were reminding us that it was like 10 p.m. to us. Time to rest up for our first full day of RootsTech 2019!!!
This wwas a lovely blog post
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