Antelope Island

For Memorial Day we decided to go somewhere we had never been before: Antelope Island.  This State Park is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake and it very much unchanged from what it was 200 years ago.  There are very few trees, lots of sagebrush, and wildlife.  We saw 5 lone bison, one bison herd, two fox, 5 longhorn antelope, and a mother great-horned owl with her two babies.  Pretty good, eh.  

Here are two of the bison.

We started our day by taking a short hike up a hill to see the view.  

Here is Clark and Emily and Blake going up.  You'll notice the lake off in the background.

In this one you'll see that Katie didn't walk much of it on her own - she preferred being carried by dad.

After the hike we found ourselves a pavilion near the beach for a cookout lunch.  In the background you see the beach that stretches pretty far down to the lake.  We didn't head down to the water because it is very salty and FULL of brine shrimp.  Better to look at than play in.  Clark wants me to share with you that the sand is actually brine shrimp poop that is coated with calcium carbonate - much like pearls are made.  So he calls it pearlized poop sand.  Nice.

I love this photo of Kate in her camp chair, waiting for Clark to finish cooking her hot dog.

After lunch we headed down to the South end of the island to the Feilding Garr Ranch where they were having games and music for Memorial Day.  

Behind the ranch there was a grove of trees near a natural spring.  The kids played in there for a couple of hours - just pretending.  

Here Blake was trying his hand at roping a calf.  Provided the calf stands perfectly still.  Even then it's pretty hard!