Antelope Island and Winners Announced

Winners of Joleene Naylor's 1st Book, Shades of Gray

The two 'Shades of Gray' winners are Stephanie from DMS and Pk Hrezo.   I will need your email addresses to gift the e-books.  You must have a Kindle for these books.  Stephanie, I will need your email address, so please contact me.  I will be sending the e-books along to both of you next week, so if you don't have a Kindle (you can download it free to your computer or smart phone) or don't want the book, please contact me before then.  I know you two will enjoy reading it as Joleene is one of the best authors around.

Congratulations to both Stephanie and Pk.

By the way, according to Amazon, I can gift an e-book to anyone with an e-mail address, so that's good to know.

Antelope Island

Last Tuesday, my family and I took a day excursion to Antelope Island, in Northern Utah.  Did we have fun?  You betcha.  It was the perfect day - low 70's and the island wasn't very crowded.  This shot is from Antelope Island looking to the East across the Great Salt Lake.

History

John C Fremont and Kit Carson were the first known visitors to the island in 1845.  They killed several antelope, thus giving the island its name.  The LDS Tithing herd was kept on this island until 1871, and managed by Fielding Garr, who took up permanent residency.  Although tourists can visit this historic ranch, we did not due to time constraints.

Livestock, cattle and sheep, were kept here.  In 1893, twelve head of bison were brought here in a small ship that almost capsized.  The potential of the island as a tourist attaction had been discovered.  The island is now managed by Utah State Parks.

Today, travelers can reach the island by the causeway.

Again, this is looking out from Antelope Island.  To the left, you can see the small marina.  The Great Salt Lake is a remainder of prehistoric Lake Bonneville, which covered about 20,000 square miles of land in parts of Utah, Nevada, and Idaho 30,000 or so years ago.  Dinosaurs roamed our land then, and Lake Bonneville was a great stop for water.

 This picture graph is from the Visitors Center, and shows what would happen if Lake Bonneville were to return.  The dark blue is where the lake is right now.  The light blue shows it climbing back up to to top peak.

Today, the lake is 75 miles long and 35 miles wide.  Water levels in the lake fluctuate, and there are years where the causeway is flooded, leaving no way to enter.  Antelope Island has swimming with its white sandy beaches and sailboating. 

Here, a group of students have fun in the water.

Creatures of the Land

This is a desert terrain, and so one must expect to see wildlife of sorts.

Top picture: I was 'lucky' enough to run into this lovely snake, which resembled a rattler.  After getting home and examining the picture closely, blown-up, it is a Gopher Snake, which acts like a rattler for self-preservation, and is harmless.  Doesn't matter.  I kept my distance and gave it the right-of-way.

Bottom picture:  although difficult to see, if you look closely, you'll see a lizard by the shade.

There are plenty of birds and especially Sea Gulls, which are protected in Utah.  This is a shot of Egg Island from Antelope Island.  Egg Island is a large rookery for the Sea Gulls.

We were thrilled to find a couple of bison grazing.  If you don't know much about bison, be aware that they can and do attack.  It's usually people who decide to walk up to them or stand in the middle of a herd.  If you ever run across bison, keep a good distance and be respectful.

What I love above Antelope Island is the rough Southwestern terrain.  These next few pictures speak for themselves.

In case you don't know what the low level plants that cover the ground are, well, they're sagebrush.  You see them in western movies all the time.  Late fall, winter, early spring, they become the tumble weeds that blow around.

All in all, it was a wonderful day.  I want to thank my husband Barry for taking us and for many of these pictures.  I also want to thank James and Angela for coming with us and for several of these pictures too.

I hope you liked this blog.  I just wanted to share our great day with all of you.

LHR my dear friends and let us all PAWS for Success.