Cowboys and Indians Country

Antelope Island

Springdale, Utah -- Just outside of Zion National Park

After leaving Salt Lake City this morning, we headed about 35 miles north to Antelope Island State Park, a large island in the Great Salt Lake. The picture I have in my head of an island is something kind of small, kinda flat, and pretty empty. Antelope Island couldn't be more different. It's about 17 miles long, and several miles wide at its widest point. It has its own mountain range, a herd of about 700 bison, numerous pronghorn antelopes (hence the name), a bunch of mountain sheep, and who knows what else. No predators, though, so every year they round up some bison for sale.

The lake is too salty for fish, but it does have skillions of teeny brine shrimp. Birds love them, so the island is a major nesting and stopping-over place for birds.

The island is very scenic and a great place to visit to bird-and-bison watch, hike, etc. I thought we'd spend a couple of hours there, but we were there most of the day. Finally, though, we headed south to Zion.

We couldn't see them when we were in SLC, but a little south of the city on I-15 we saw snow-covered mountain peaks. Somewhere around Provo we lost sight of the far-away tall mountains. From there I-15 travels in a wide valley between impressive, but smaller, tree- and grass- covered mountains. We're getting blase about this kind of scenery, because we saw a lot of it during GART I. But 300 miles later, when we turned off the interstate on the way to our motel near Zion,  the world suddenly changed. Now the scenery is spectacular! With the huge mesas and towering rock formations, it looks like the setting for one of those westerns like "The Magnificent Seven." And there was a storm in the distance with amazing lightning flashes. This is the kind of stuff we came here to see. Tomorrow: Zion.