Over Memorial Day, we traveled down to Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake. We had never been here before so we decided to just go and see what it was like. Antelope Island was pretty cool and the scenery was amazing. Driving out on the causeway, the narrow road the connects the island to the mainland, was fun. It felt like you were driving away from the busy city to a deserted island. Which is pretty much what we were doing. Antelope Island is mainly desert range land in the middle of the Great Salt Lake so it is pretty sparse. This was fine for us though because we were able to just get away, enjoy some hikes and nature.
When we first arrived, we started driving down the east side of the Island. This side gave a view of smaller Great Salt Lake inlet and the Wasatch Mountains. While driving, we stopped at Frary Peak trail-head and decided to get out and hike around for a bit.
We hiked the Dooly Knob trail because it seemed the most family friendly. This trail took us to the top of the peak so we could over look both sides of the Island.
This trail was a pretty good incline over the short 1.3 miles one way. We gained a little over 700 ft in elevation.
Logan and Emily were the leaders and super hiked up to the top yelling back to us to hurry up. Brooklyn and Charlotte were troopers and kept walking and walking. Colby jumped between the front and then the back of the pack.
When we finally got to the top of Dooly Knob, we could look out and see the entire Great Salt Lake.
The view was pretty awesome because we could see for mile in all directions. While at the top, we ate lunch on the tallest rocks.
Colby and Logan climbed even higher to get on the tippy top of the rock formations. There they ate their lunch in peace and quiet alone.
While we were hiking we saw a lot of wildlife including a mom and baby bison, lizards, birds, and a big wolf spider of some kind. I could have just sat on top of that Knob all day and enjoyed the quietness. Unfortunately the wind was blowing a bit too much to stay for very long. Finally we made our way back down the mountain. Coming down was easier but also very slick in some parts because of the steepness. We had to really be careful going down. We ended up hiking about 3 miles.
After getting back in the van, we decided to drive around to the west side of the Island to where the Great Salt Lake beaches were located. As we were driving we saw a lot of the famous Antelope Island Bison herds. A few bison even walked right out in front of us on the road. It was like Yellowstone all over again.
It was cool to see the bison up so close but we had to laugh at the crazy people that got out of their cars to go take close up pictures of the bison. I guess they don't realize how fast bison can run and yeah they are still wild animals!
On the west side of the island, we decided to walk down to the beach and go wading in the Great Salt Lake. The water was so salty that even the sand had a crunchy salt texture. There were also so many bugs! There were swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, it was so gross.
Wading in the water was nice though. The water was warm and pretty shallow. The boys walked quite a ways out before the water was too deep. Our legs were pretty crusty after that.
After wading for a bit, we met up with the Stewart's. Our plan was to meet up with them and ride our bikes on some of the trails around the Island. It turned out that most of the trails were for hiking only not bikes so that was a bummer. We did find two pretty good trails though and decided to try them out. While Brooklyn and I stayed back at the picnic/campground area, the rest of the group headed out on their bikes. They said this first trail was pretty decent until it wasn't... It started out really nicely and everyone could ride it even Charlotte and then it just turned super rocky and sketchy. They ended up hiking the bike for a ways until finally they found a better trail to get back to the camp. Russell was really proud of Charlotte though because she rode the whole way except for the hike-a-bike parts.
When they got back from their ride, we made hot dogs and ate together. We loved getting together with everyone. After dinner, and before it got too dark, the kids wanted to go out on one more bike ride. This time on a different trail. Well, this ride only lasted a few minutes because the mosquitoes came out in full force! We were all rushing to load up the vehicles to get out of the bugs. I think we all came home with about a million bites.
The bugs were so bad as we were driving off the Island along the causeway, we literally had to use our windshield wipers to be able to see through all of the bug splat on the windshield. It was raining bugs! When we finally got home, our van was caked in guts and instead of being a black van it was now a green van from the bug guts! The bad thing was that it also stunk so bad of a dead fish smell. It took multiple high powered car washes to get all of the bugs off the van.
Other than the bug fiasco, the trip to Antelope Island was quite fun. We loved hiking and biking the trails as well as spending time with family.
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