Nathan's Occasional Blog

This is my very first Consumer Electronics Show (CES) experience. I’ve wanted to come to this show for a very long time, and it’s the third year I’ve actually registered (my previous attempts were thwarted by either a new human joining our family or a new role at Microsoft on the near horizon). Unfortunately, and unlike my previous attempts, this year I don’t have any close contacts from Microsoft or elsewhere attending … that I know of … so I’m effectively going stag and figuring things out on my own.

I drove from Seattle, which is typically a two-day affair if it’s just me driving (18 hours), but with a big storm moving in to the Northwest I didn’t want to get stuck with the mountain passes closed or slow traveling through snow and ice so I left a day early broke the trip up into 3 days. I stayed the night in Ontario, OR and then Salt Lake City. Ontario didn’t really have much notable about it, other than being on the OR/ID border on I-84.

Salt Lake City, however, was really nice. I’ve driven through a couple times before and made a connection in the airport, but this was my first actual stop in the city itself. It’s very modern and new, quite clean, and seems well planned with wide boulevards and lots of trees, etc. It reminded me a LOT of Charlotte, NC actually – where my wife and I went to high school. Similar to Charlotte (at least back in the 90’s), SLC seems to close up in the evenings and on the weekend. It was dead – hardly any traffic, even on Monday morning when I left.

I took a nice walk from The Gateway area where my hotel was up a few long city blocks past the basketball arena (I wish Seattle still had a team) and up to Temple Square, effectively Mecca for the LDS Church. I’m not Mormon, but I can at least appreciate what they’re trying to do. There were a lot of people like me milling about. Although there are a few visitors centers I didn’t enter, preferring to walk around the gardens and take in the sculpture and architecture. The Tabernacle is open to the public, which surprised me. Assembly Hall and the big cathedral were not, however – but that’s okay. The Tabernacle is what you see on TV when you see a choir concert. The organ, orchestra stage, and choir lofts are huge, but what shocked me was how small the rest of the building felt. I would have pegged the seating capacity at around 2000 or 2500, but Wikipedia says it’s actually about 7K – and we all know the Internet is never wrong. 😉

Here are a few pics from Temple Square.

After my self-guided tour I strolled back down towards my hotel and had a fabulous dinner for 1 at Fleming’s Steakhouse. Highly recommended and it induced the necessary food coma I was after for a good night’s sleep. Off to Vegas in the morning!