If Ever You're In Payson

"This temple will remain here in the Payson area as a landmark, as a beautiful emblem of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." -Elder Kent F. Richards 

Because I'm always a day late and a dollar short, by the time I got online to order tickets for the Payson Utah Temple open house, all of the motivated mormons had hogged all of the good time slots. No problem. We just checked the kids out of school, and Neil took the afternoon off. Any excuse is a good excuse. After all...it is the Lord's house.

Some of the kids deemed this temple their favorite, with its gorgeous cream tones and amazing stained glass and dark wood inside. Spencer is convinced that this is where he wants to get married. The wind was out of control as we arrived at the temple. I pulled a Marilyn Monroe on more than one occasion. Trust me, with these legs, I was doing no one a favor.

The kids can't wait until the temple is dedicated so that we can come do baptisms here.

Angie had mentioned that there was a Mexican restaurant on main street in Payson that was a hole-in-the-wall but quite yummy. Well, we found a hole-in-the-wall. It was a tiny Mexican market with a cafe of sorts where one could order tacos and burritos. The kids kept hinting at how sketchy this place looked. But how many hole-in-the-wall Mexican joints could be on Main street in Payson? So we ordered our food with a hint of trepidation. We should have left when the lady mentioned that there were no chips and salsa, but I was holding my ground on this one. 

"Don't judge a book by its cover," I preached as we took up every seat in the corner of the little store. 

We tried not to stare at the life sized cutout of the female boxer that was perched conveniently above the drinks. Her cleavage was difficult to ignore as we sipped our sodas straight from Mexico. 

"This orange soda tastes weird," commented Jonah.

"Yes, but look, it's made from real sugar," I announced with enthusiasm.

Even I was beginning to suspect that I had chosen the wrong hole-in-the-wall. I felt like we were in a filming of Nacho Libre. I expected Jack Black to come sauntering in in his stretchy pants at any moment. I was trying to picture Angie eating here with all of her coworkers and wondered how on earth they even fit into the place. Finally the food was served. It was..um..not good food. It was barely warm. I muscled down one bite of my ginormous burrito and knew that this would not do. Well now this was just dandy! We couldn't eat this food, but we were all starving. I didn't want to hurt the feelings of the poor lady who had prepared our meal for us. 

We got the brilliant idea to act like we needed to be somewhere and asked for to-go boxes. We paid for the food and kindly thanked the lady then got the heck out of there and stashed our food into the nearest trash receptacle. 

We looked up to see the actual hole-in-the-wall that Angie was talking about, a mere two doors down and across the street. After the first joint, this place looked like fine dining. We marveled at  the plethora of seating options, cried tears of joy when the server offered us limitless chips and salsa, and ferociously gulped down our American sodas. It was indeed very good food. We filled up on chips and salsa while the kids gave me a bad time for always getting them into shenanigans. You don't remember the excursions that go smoothly. It's the shenanigans that make the best stories.

After dinner, we walked down Payson's old main street and came across this lovely building. As soon as Sabrina noticed that there was a book vault in the basement, well that was all she wrote. We had to go explore.

And exploring always leads to buying, especially at cheap used bookstores. I felt guilty when the sweet employee offered us a ten percent discount for buying so many books. At full price, we were spending a mere thirty dollars on ten books! It felt like highway robbery.

Am I the only one who sees the irony in Neil's book selection? The more ironic thing is that Neil is not a reader. That Hitler book is 570 Pages! Looks like I'll be reading it, annotating it, then filling Neil in on all of the interesting facts. Neil is a voracious vicarious reader.

These were my finds. I read Man's Search For Meaning in the 8th grade, and it changed my life. I figured I needed to read it again. It will fit in nicely with the twenty other holocaust books perched on my shelf. I bought the Truman book because...David McCullough.

This is the original wall of the old building. This building rivaled  the temple if I'm going off the kids' reaction. This basement bookstore had that old building and old book smell. It was delicious!

 I had to take a bunch more photos of this building inside and out. And I had to photoshop the heck out of them to make them look all antiquey. We felt like we had stepped back in time for the afternoon.

There was a tiny museum inside the soda shop in the old original bank vault. The wall is covered in old bank notes and financial documents. This place was right up my alley.

That's Jonah wishing those gold bricks were real. 

This fine afternoon, we spent one hundred dollars on Mexican food and thirty dollars on books and left with a whole load of stories to tell. Who would have thought that Payson could provide such a delightful afternoon? We were so glad we played hookie that windy Monday! If ever you're in Payson, I know of a great little Mexican restaurant. It's a hole-in-the-wall, but the food is surprisingly tasty.

We plan to return soon to do baptisms, and we know where we'll be eating and where to get a good ice cream and good book afterward.:)