16 March 2013 - Antelope Island

This is always such an interesting stretch of days: Pi Day, Ides of March, David's birthday, St. Patrick's Day all in a row, followed closely by the Vernal Equinox.  It is a great time to get out of the house and celebrate longer days and warmer weather. At least today was--tomorrow has rain and snow in the forecast. 

Jack has been down and miserable with the flu for the last week. Since he wasn't feeling as bad as he had been, he agreed to go on a quickie morning car trip with me to Farmington Bay to see if anything was happening in the bird world. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee, packed up the scope, tripod, camera, binoculars and left. No leisurely morning for us! 

It was an interesting trip out, driving on a freeway that hadn't even been built when we left here for Michigan. There was nothing happening on the Bay. It was so quiet - odd. There was a man running a remote controlled boat around-- herding ducks, but that was about the extent of the activity. 

Jack said he was feeling okay, so we decided to keep going north and check out the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. About halfway there we saw a sign for Antelope Island. Change of plans!

We hopped off the freeway and headed for the island. Leaving the town of Syracuse we drove across a 7 mile long causeway to get to the island. It was beyond words. We were driving with snow covered mountains behind us, lake on either side and heading toward an island. 

The last time I tried to get to the island--which was years ago, the lake was over the road and had washed it out in spots. No luck. In fact, after the road was washed out, it was ten years before it was rebuilt so cars could get out there again. 

A funny thing about Antelope Island is that from across the lake it looks arid. Baked dry and brown. Anyone flying into SLC gets a good look straight down on it and it does not look inviting. Nothing could be more wrong. 

Today was perfect. The colors were incredible: many blues of the lake, the white sand moving into buff grasses, then the gold and rust of taller phragmites--it looked like a watercolor painting. The mountain snow reflecting on the water was the icing on the cake.

    
We chose the road heading south on the east side of the island, so the mountains across the lake are the Wasatch. One of the only signs on the road made us laugh. The island has a herd of 700 buffalo. It is a managed herd and is culled every year to keep it at that number, as the island cannot support a larger herd.  Not more than a mile from this sign, we saw seven buffalo grazing near the road. 

  In addition to buffalo the island has bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope and mule deer. 
 We didn't see any of those. We did see a coyote. We were a long way away from it, but it was unmistakable. 

 We watched it come out of the water and make its way inland. I like the vee wake it is leaving behind.  

We also saw jack rabbits, boy are they fast! Jack saw three maybe four having a fabulous game of chase through the sagebrush and rocks. They were having a great time. Since jack rabbits can really mobile, by the time I found them with my camera and got them in focus they were long gone. I did get a blurry picture of one bunnying off to follow his buddies over the rocks. 

We spent a lot of time oohing and aahing. Fortunately there were many places to pull off the road for some serious admiration.    Every rise, every curve revealed a new vista. All incredibly gorgeous: from the shore line views to the rocky crests.  
 

This slope was topped with what looks like a rock wall. We wondered if the the original Lake Bonneville came up to the rock level. Makes me want to take a geology class. 

We were headed for the Garr Ranch-- originally owned by the Morman church and founded in 1848. It has the original farmhouse, spring house, and rootcellar under a school room.  When we saw a sign pointing to a lookout, we took a detour. The road went pretty much straight up the side of the mountain. I wasn't sure my car would make it up that hill, but it did. The vistas were worth it. 
 
Whenever we stopped  you could hear the air vibrate with the songs of Meadowlarks. Lovely!  Even found one of the singers on top of a rocky outcrop at the top of the lookout. 

 Running around the base of the rocks were lots of little lizards-- the kind we used to catch as kids. I think they are whiptails, but not sure. 

Here are two views looking across the lake from the lookout point. 

The high point, okay one of many high points on this trip for me was seeing two (2!) great horned owls. They were sitting in a knot of branches high in a cottonwood tree. Hard to see and harder still to get pictures of as the camera wanted to focus on the branches in front of them. But still, what a treat!

 Almost as interesting as the owls were the remnants of a meal hanging from a branch below them. 

 

Can't help myself-- four more pictures of the island. 

 I got tickled when I saw a line of cars pulled over to the side of the road. Everyone was taking pictures of these two riders. Okay, it was picturesque. Towering mountains behind the riders in the sage brush. Still funny. And yes, I took a photo too, but on the fly. Didn't pull over. 

Found several buffalo statues:

 Loved this. Crow on a stump in the lake.

 Here is part of the causeway going across the lake.

There was one little downside to this trip. Ticks. On the way home we stopped at a gas station. We were waiting for a pump to open up. Jack pulled off his ball cap did a double take and started laughing. "Look! I have a passenger."  Big tick walking across the bill of his cap. He rolled down the window and flicked the tick out there somewhere. 

We stopped at David's next, took him cake for his birthday and he fed us dinner. We were telling him about the tick and he was not amused. Especially when we were having dessert.  We set the plates down on the table, I bent over mine for a big sniff of dark chocolate and a tick fell off my head and was crawling across the plate. Jack nudged me surreptitiously, but David noticed it and freaked. Stabbed it to death with a pen.  Later that evening he called Robin to tell her we had infested his house with a plague. 

We did drop all our clothes directly into the washing machine as we stepped into the house. All should be okay.  But truly, those were the biggest ticks I have ever seen. Probably buffalo ticks.