Route Map, Ogden, Antelope Island, and Salt Lake City
Touristing on Antelope Island
We actually slept in a bit on Tuesday – it was nearly 7am when I got up and made coffee. I took a walk around the campground, enjoying the morning light and relative calm. A dozen or so new rigs had come in to the campground overnight. I took some pics in the clear morning light, it was bright and sunny and getting warmer by the minute. We ate a leisurely breakfast, buttoned things up, and headed back down I-15 to Antelope Island. The Wasatch Range occupied much of our left side to the east, it was not a high and craggy group up north here, although it did get a bit rocky-er down south. The top ridgelines were dotted here and there with radar domes, satellite dishes, and cell-tower repeaters. We headed south, passing by the big Hill Air Force base about half-way down. It was less than thirty miles back to the park, we made it there quickly.
Gone with the Wind?
We got off the interstate at Syracuse again, and passed through the entrance gate to the park a little after nine a.m. It was 101′ and very windy. The causeway out to the island was a two lane arrow, fresh black macadam with no variation for six miles. There was about a three foot shoulder on either side, and then a short, crusty, salty strip of gunky vegetation, and then the lake. The reason I bring this up now is because about two miles into the solitary journey, we heard a tremendous flapping noise all along the right side of the Bounder. It was as if the outer skin had peeled off and was now morphing into some sort of fiberglass mainsail. I slowed down and pulled over, careful not to slide too deeply into the viscous glop of salty crud just off the road. When I opened the door to get out I was almost blown halfway to Montana. A cursory glance, and then a curse, was all it took for me to see that the awning had gotten the wind up its skirts, so to speak, and had come completely unrolled. Normally, this 24 by 16 foot slab of vinyl was propped up by a couple of long struts that reach out from the roof and hold the awning open over pretty much the entire length of the buggy. But somehow the spring-loaded tube that contained the thing had come unsprung, and it unrolled in place like a frenzied Venetian blind. There was little I could do at the moment, short of rolling a few bungee cords around the whole arrangement and then proceeding along to the Island, where hopefully I could find a place large enough to unroll and re-roll, and also calm enough to not have the topsail keelhaul the jib or something like that.
As luck would have it, the visitor center was perched high atop the highest part of the island, with a commanding view of the marina down below and the causeway back to the mainland. It was also about twenty degrees hotter, and a Force 5 gale was blowing across the parking lot, making the fabled Mount Washington aerie seem dead calm by comparison. I climbed up on the roof and, laying flat on my stomach, handrolled the entire awning back into its’ cocoon, six inches at a time. As the final cog snapped into place and locked it all in, my hands and arms felt like they’d turned to concrete. That was on fire. And filled with hornets.
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
In any case, we wandered around the visitor center for a bit, taking in the history of the island, which had been a privately owned sheep ranch for much of the past century or two. We looked around the area, gazing out across the dusty brown desert to the dusty brown water, ringed with white salt crust, and the dusty brown air at the horizon. After about twenty seconds, our eyes watered from the dusty brown dust blown into our pupils. We got back in the Bounder and followed the road back down and around the bend. Our first destination was the Buffalo Point lookout and campground. Along the way, we saw a buffalo, so we know they weren’t kidding. And a mule deer, happily munching away in the middle of a field about three-quarters of a mile away. I was a bit nonplussed to see these beasts out in the hot summer noon-time sun, I’d have thought they’d know better.
At Buffalo Point, we could look around and see one of the sample campsites for RVs down along the bay, and a little tiny speck turned out to be a buffalo. I pointed him out to Hal and Melissa who seemed disinterested. I took a shot of Melissa sitting on a rock. You can’t see it here, but she’s mouthing the words, “Hurry up its goddam hot out here!”We came down off the Point, and followed the road winding around the island. We saw a pronghorn Antelope, I assume after which the Island is named.The buffalo had wisely sat down by now.The antelope displayed an unusually calm aspect towards the rampaging visitors, but I guess he’d become used to it by now. In New Jersey, this guy’d have been run down in the blink of an eye.The road wound around and followed the eastern edge of the island, more or less. We saw a few more deer and antelope, playing.
About three-quarters of the way down the island was the Fielding Garr ranch, a preserved example of the life on the island spanning the time between about 1850 and 1980, when the state finally bought the hunk of land and made it a park. It was interesting, you could actually walk around the ranch and touch stuff. There was a cool little spring in the back yard of the ranch house, perfect for posing fer picky-tures.
Our tour of the Ranch at and end, we slowly made our way back up the same way, this time getting a good view of the mountains across the lake and valley floor to the east. Shimmering waves of heat rose from the salt brine, and as we hit the causeway back to the mainland, Melissa made me stop and take some pix of the little plovers running back and forth.
Back in Syracuse, it was a mile or so back out to the interstate, and then another 50 or so miles south was the City of Salt Lake. More radar domes, cell towers, etc, and just outside of the city we passed a big open pit mine literally a foot off the interstate, and the we saw the Capitol building and the skyline.
We followed the signs, and it didn’t take long to find our KOA, just north of the downtown area. We were parked and unloaded by about 4pm. Tomorrow, Melissa and Hal would attend the first day of the convention/conference, and I’d wander the city playing tourista. The KOA was just a mile or so out of the center of town, and the state was installing the infrastructure for a light rail line that would be running north and south, between Ogden and Provo. Orange barrels were the decoration of the day.
Day 5 – about 40 miles
Number of States: 1
Previous Day 4 Next Day 6