Antelope Island

Alternate titles for this post include:

• Floating with the Sea Monkeys
• Bison and Pronghorn and Brine Shrimp, Oh My!
• A Tribute to American Misnomers

If you guessed from my clue in yesterday's post ("A little sea-bathing would set me up forever") that we took the kids for a dip in the Great Salt Lake, you are correct.  Yeah!  And the reason I thought of that quote is that one of the things I learned during our trip yesterday was that there have been several resorts built on the Great Salt Lake over the years - at least in part because of the perceived benefit of "sea-bathing."  Anyway...

We've been looking forward to making this trip for a while, and loved having a few hours at Antelope Island State Park yesterday.  We couldn't wait to see BUFFALO and ANTELOPE!  Unfortunately, we saw neither one.

Little did we know... there are no antelope on Antelope Island because there are no antelope in North America.  Am I the only one who didn't know that??  The man who named the island saw pronghorns, the North American antelope-ish non-antelopes, and named the island for those animals.

And buffalo don't live in North America either.  ("Home on the Range" may be the most misleading song in American history.)  Instead we saw lots of American Bison, which was super cool.

These four bison were hanging out near the Visitors' Center,
just begging to have their picture taken.

A better look.

We also saw 8-10 pronghorns eating a late-afternoon snack
near the shoreline while walking to the Visitors' Center.

Bison everywhere!

Jack enjoyed the bison skull at the Visitors' Center.
Luke preferred the mule deer antlers.

I spy a bison mount.

"I've got the fever, and the only cure is MORE BISON."

After some wildlife viewing and edumacating at the Visitors' Center, we headed down to the beach for our chance to go sea-bathing.  Cat learned a few more things from a ranger with a display set up in the parking area.  We talked about the salinity in the lake (5x more salty than the ocean, with even higher concentrations in parts of the lake), the reason for the salinity (salt is carried into the lake by the 4 rivers that feed it, but the lake has no outlets so as the water evaporates, the salt stays behind), and saw some brine shrimp up close.

We changed into our bathing suits and made our way, at an excruciatingly slow pace, over incredibly soft sand mixed with big rocks, which in parts was so dry and cracked that it was painful to walk on.  It ended up being a 15-minute trek from the parking area to the water, but we all had such a blast in the lake that we forgot about it once we were in.

The weather was perfect - warm but not too hot - and the lake was refreshing without being cold.  The big turn-offs were the swarms of flies on the shoreline and the ickiness of the water.  The flies really bothered the kids, and the water really bothered me, but once again, once we got over those things, we loved it.  The buoyancy was so so so cool.  Ben literally floated while sitting Indian style, and I floated without even getting my hair wet.  The only one who didn't float was Jack, and that's because he didn't want to.  The kids had a blast in the water and were begging us to stay longer, then once we got them out, they began begging us to go back.  So.  I think we'll have to go back.

Cat learned that because of the alkalinity of the sand on the shoreline,
it fizzes when you pour vinegar on it.  She made a sand & vinegar volcano!

The trek to the water.

Eliza tried walking in the stroller tracks to avoid the
hard, crusty sand.

Group picture on the shoreline: 1st attempt.

Hey, it's me!

Group picture on the shoreline: 2nd attempt.

Ben and the kids in the lake.

Luke love love loved playing in the water.

Cat was the first one to float.

Followed by Eliza.

Then Luke.

Daddy's turn.

This is as close as Jack got to floating.

It was crazy to me that as soon as the water evaporated off of my skin
you could see salt crystals on my arm hairs.  By the time we got back up
to the showers, we all had spots of salt all over us.

The view of Antelope Island from the causeway, on our way back home.

We loved it.  We spent about 3 hours there and easily could have stayed twice that long.  We must go back, and Ben has made the executive decision that it will go on our list of places to take people when they visit us.  So - who wants to come??