Antelope Island

I found myself with a weekend in August in Ogden Utah, between two Oracle database courses. I decided on Sunday to go out to Antelope Island State Park. The park is, as indicated, an island in the Great Salt Lake. More properly, it is a mountain range that sticks up above the water level. Being an Island, you need some way to get there. The state of Utah has built a causeway to the island and its park facilities. This provides the first stop: shore birds love the shallows created by the road. The shallow water next to the road provides a place sheltered from the wind where the brine flies can be picked up easily. There were rails, gulls phalaropes, and a lot of other birds that make their living eating small insects. You cal also get to the island by boat; the first thing you see as you land on the island is a marina.

My first stop was the Visitors Center for an orientation to the island. The center is quite good and has all of the usual things like a bookshop and an orientation film. It also has a good view of the mountains to the north of the lake. After the orientation I decided that the best time to hike in August would be early so I drove to Buffalo Point for the hike to the top of the point. You hiked through outcrops of decomposing granite to the end of the point, where the view was spectacular. You could see the mountains to the north and to the west. You could also see the shoreline about 500 feet below you. It was the end of the wildflower season, so a few daisies were still blooming.

After that I drove to White Rock Bay, a sandy, silty beach area. On the way I stopped at the buffalo corrals, but there were no bison there. The bay area is a large silty salt flat with sand at levels the water never rises to. There were dune evening primroses in the sand and 6 foot tall rushes in the silt. Beyond the silt was just salt for about a half of a mile. Quire a strange beach. It was breezy, so the area was not too hot. As a matter of fact, it was breezy everywhere on the island.

The final area I drove to was the old ranch house. I did see a bison or two along the way, but they kept away from the road. I also stopped along the way and took a trail up the east side of the mountain, walking through an old fire area. The brush was just growing back, so most of what you saw was granite dikes that looked like marble cake where different types of granite had intruded at different times.

The ranch buildings are preserved and docents explain how the ranching process worked on the island. There was also a trail that took you close to the shore of the lake and demonstrated the different terraces formed when the lake (then Lake Bonneville) was much higher. You also walk through an area covered by another type of reed that was imported from (I believe they said) South Africa. The trip to the island was an interesting way to spend a day in a weekend far from home.