Last year, I posted on Temple Tourism. (You could think of this post as Temple Tourism Part 2.) When my daughter turned 12 last year, she wanted to do baptisms for the dead on her birthday. She wanted to get a special temple recommend holder, basically a very expensive piece of plastic to hold your temple recommend. While in Seagull Book, I noticed a Utah Temple Passport where you could track all the Utah temples you’ve been to. I thought it might be fun to get for her, and it has been fun to travel to all the temples in Utah.* We went to the Vernal Temple the day after her birthday, meaning we went to every Utah temple in 366 days, essentially a Leap Year. (She didn’t want to go on her birthday this year, so we went the day after.) Here are some fun things we’ve learned/discovered:

The Vernal Temple was the only temple we visited that had a doorbell! And they had to unlock the door to let us out! The Manti Temple had some really cool pioneer-era murals. Most temples don’t. The Draper Temple had the boiler go out so the water and showers were very cold! Summer seems to be a good time to visit–much fewer crowds and easier to get in and out. We were in and out of the Monticello Temple in 20 minutes! (That was after a 4 hour drive, but my son was in Moab at scout camp, so it worked out.) Salt Lake was easy to get in and out of too.

I decided to buy a passport for myself and discovered this week that there are other versions for the United States (which I purchased for my kids and myself too.) My sister said she has taken kids to Hawaii and Idaho temples, so I guess we’ll have to start exploring temples out of state. To be honest, we didn’t have a goal to visit all the Utah temples in a year–it just happened to work out that way. My daughter still had the audacity to say we didn’t go to the temple enough. Have you visited other temples? Do you have any fun stories to share about temple visits?

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*We haven’t visited the Jordan River Temple because it has been closed for over a year for remodeling. It is supposed to open either late this year or early next year after extensive renovations. The brand new Cedar City Temple (not in our passport) is supposed to be dedicated December 10, 2017.