Baby Quails.

This is how I fall in love with Salt Lake City on a Saturday:

Drive through the Avenues to the home workshop of a violin-maker who specializes in bows. Learn about the minute differences between Siberian stallion and Argentine mare hair.

Eat meat pies, plum bars, and eclairs from Mrs. Backer’s Pastry Shop while strolling down S Temple to the Presbyterian church and the Cathedral.

Climb Ensign Peak. Look at the the whole tree-carpeted valley. Watch the airplanes take off and land. See the baby quails on the trail.

Check out the Capitol Hill Ward meetinghouse. It looks like a Disney castle.

Hang out on the ample, shady lawn of the Capitol in late afternoon.

Drive through the neighborhoods of narrow streets and steep hills and old houses, pretty as any in Boston or Seattle.

Drink a Cherry Crush.

Eat an absurdly tasty reuben at Ruth’s Diner in Emigration Canyon. 1960 Corvette in the parking lot.

Wake up; we're here.

All it took was me getting up in the morning, going running, listening to Wilco, and seeing the moms bringing their kids to school to bring tears to my eyes.  That was Friday.  Today it was the driveway in a neighborhood south of Seven Peaks with handprints and names in the walkway and "Concrete is strong.  Family is stronger."  You'd think it was that time of the month, or something.  I don't know.  There's a lot of beauty around.