HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY
NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE 2005
FRIDAY FIELDTRIPS
If you can make your way to Salt Lake by Friday, April 15th, 2005, locals will be on hand to lead fieldtrips during the day that may be of interest to participants. Details are as follows. Sign-up sheets will be made available in your registration packets.
The Deluxe Technology Tour
Ken Rand, Utah author of six books including Fairy BrewHaHa at the Lucky Nickel Saloon, The Golems of Laramie County, and Tales of the Lucky Nickel Saloon, will lead this tour. Meet in the hotel lobby at 9 am to board a chartered bus that will carry you north first to Ogden and the historic Union Station. Housed in the station are the Browning Arms Museum displaying the inventions of Ogden native John Browning, the Browning/Kimball Auto Museum, the Wattis/Dumke Model Railroad Museum, the Utah State Railroad Museum and the Union Station Natural History Museum. See www.theunionstation.org for more details. After lunch in a local restaurant (extra), your final stop will be the Hill Air Force Base Aerospace Museum, www.hill.af.mil/museum/, that houses flying machines from the earliest pioneers to WWII bombers and more recent craft. The bus will then return you to the hotel by six pm in time to prepare for the conference's opening dinner at 7.
A cost of $30 per person must be charged for this tour which includes the bus, museum fees and lunch. Also, a minimum of 20 people must sign up for this tour to make a go of it. If we don't get so many, the tour will be cancelled and your money refunded.
The Genealogy Tour
Christine Caldwell, Utah mother of nine, author of articles and holder of a degree in family history, will lead this tour.
Meet in the hotel lobby at 9 am to take public shuttle and light rail to downtown Salt Lake and the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, website http://www.thingstodo.com/states/UT/salt_lake/famhistorylibrary.htm
Christine can get you started as you research your own family--or your novel's characters. Lunch will be at the nearby Lion House, historic home of Brigham Young, http://www.lion-house.com Afterward, return to the family history library, tour the Mormon sites of Temple Square, the Beehive House and the Church History Museum--or return to the hotel on your own before six when the free shuttles stop running.
Each participant will pay for this tour as s/he goes. Allow $2.70 for the roundtrip train fare and somewhere between $10-15 for the lunch depending upon personal selection.
The University of Utah Library and Museums Tour
Ruth Hanson, University of Utah librarian and author, will lead this tour.
There will be stops at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts www.umfa.utah.edu which includes rooms from various time periods set with period pieces, the Utah Museum of Natural History, www.umnh.utah.edu which includes Native displays, and the University of Utah Marriott library, a large research facility with particularly fine collections in Middle East--see valuable papyri--and Western Americana.
This tour is free, excluding lunch which you may purchase on your own and return to the nearby hotel may be at your own convenience--but before six when the free shuttles stop running, although walking, too, is possible.
Deseret Village Tour
Dr. Eric Swedin, professor of the history of science at Utah State University and a multi-published author will lead this tour.
Meet in the hotel lobby at 8:30 am to take the free shuttle and walk to the re-enactment pioneer village, www.thisistheplace.org/tour.html . This is perhaps a mile's walk on a hill. Dress for the activity and be prepared for the exercise. Dr. Swedin had a hand in setting up the medical history and quilt museum located in the village and will be able to get us in during this off-season time. If ten or more sign up for this, you will be able to get in for only $1. Otherwise, this tour costs $3, paying as you go. Return walking and by shuttle to the hotel by noon for lunch. Combine this tour with the following one, if you'd like, and though we'd like an approximate head count by April 14th, it will be possible to join this group at the last minute.
Fort Douglas Military Museum Tour
Dr. Swedin, will also lead this tour--in the afternoon. Combine with the previous tour if you'd like.
Meet in the hotel lobby at 1 pm to take the free shuttle to Ft. Douglas, http://www.fortdouglas.org , dating to the Mormon War/Civil War era. The Fort closes at 4. Return by shuttle to the hotel by 4:30 pm to prepare for the conference's opening dinner in the evening. This tour is free.
Dust Eaters by Julie Jensen
Perhaps you would like to join in the matinee performance of a new historical play treating of the relationship between the Mormons and the native Piutes. See http://www.saltlakeactingcompany.org/season.html for more information.
The cost of this will be $25.50.