Salt Lake City is a Great Beer Town?

Last year, Kendall and I toured the mountain west from Butte, MT, to the northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico, with a large part of the trip to Utah. We flew in and out of Salt Lake City but didn’t get to spend much time in the city. We had one night in town, but unfortunately a storm had come through the night before and wiped out most of the power in downtown and everything was closed. It was not a great time at our first Salt Lake visit. This year we were determined to get back.

We found a long weekend in October and spent four days in downtown SLC, conveniently timed with our anniversary. Forget the beer – Salt Lake City is a great town to visit! Of course, scouting out great local craft beer is a part of any trip we take, but there is so much to do there that it’s a great place to take the family.

In short, Salt Lake City wasn’t quite what we expected. We heard it was a great place to visit, but you get this idea in your head that it’s very “Mormon,” but it feels like any other large city. There is a massive LDS Church influence over the area of course. Props to the hard-working people who built an oasis in the middle of the desert next to a large body of undrinkable water. The city is gorgeous and well planned. It’s a good spot to travel for a family trip. Utah is an outdoor person’s paradise, with hiking, mountain biking, and snow skiing in the winter. The city is full of parks, museums, and historical sites to visit.

On Friday, we hit the Family History Library, the genealogy research arm of the LDS Church. Anyone can stop by and dig into their family tree. The staff is super friendly and helpful, and you can search through their vast database to see who you’re related to and from where they came. I traced my ancestors to Serbian royalty around 1,050 AD. Oh, and Kendall and I are 9th cousins. Seriously, don’t go to Salt Lake without stopping here to trace your family tree. Also, right down the street is the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s small, but worth a stop.

Sunday, we visited the National History Museum of Utah and spent about 3 hours touring the exhibits. You take the elevator to the 5th floor and work your way back down. The indigenous peoples exhibit walks you through the history of the Ute, Shoshone, Paiute, and Goshute people. It was heartbreaking to see the suffering they’ve experienced since white folks arrived, but exciting to see how they still cling to their culture, language, and traditions while intertwined with the modern world. The museum had a temporary exhibit of Egyptian artifacts that was creepy yet fascinating. The lower floors are permanent exhibits of mountain geology, fauna and flora, and the animals that call it home. And dinosaurs. There is a treasure of fossils in Utah, and there are nearly two floors of all kinds of terrifying-looking creatures.

We spent a lot of time around Liberty Park, just a few minutes south of downtown. On the Southside near the Tracy Aviary we had breakfast at The Park Café on Friday morning. This quaint little breakfast spot is everything you want in a quaint little breakfast spot. Prepare for a wait because it’s a tiny place, but it’s totally worth it! Sunday, we hopped on bike-share bicycles and rode to the park and did a few laps around it. Overall, SLC is a great biking town. There are bike lanes everywhere, and it’s so flat. Before we left town Monday afternoon, we spent time exploring the Tracy Aviary. They had owls! There were so many cute, engaging, and chatty birds. It was a fun way to end the trip.

Oh, I almost forgot the beer. Here’s the thing, you can’t make it to every craft brewery in any town you visit. There are just too many of them. Sometimes we have a plan, but this time we didn’t, other than what was walkable from the hotel or a short Lyft away. We started on Friday afternoon at Squatters Pub, one of Utah’s oldest brewers. The food and beer were both solid, including an old-school pale ale that took you back to the 90s (in a good way). Saturday, we hit Fisher Beer Co, a reboot of a classic Utah brewery founded in 1884 that closed in 1967. Next up was Templin Family Brewery, which served up a wide range of killer German lagers. We hopped in a Lyft to try SaltFire Brewing, whose focus primarily was IPAs but offered a good selection of sour beers and a few lagers too. We closed out Saturday at Proper Brewing, with burgers from Proper Burger next door. I hate to say we had a favorite, we enjoyed the beer at all of them, but we stayed longer at Proper than any other spot. The beer staff was super friendly and highly knowledgeable. We closed out Sunday with beers at Bewilder Brewing then dinner at Red Rock Brewery, another old-school brewpub with great food and a wide selection of ales and lagers. Still, those breweries were only a fraction of Salt Lake City’s breweries. I guess we’ll have to go back next year!

If you’re looking for a great family getaway, and want to drink great craft beer, visit Salt Lake. You’ll love it.