Antelope Island, Great Salt Lake

Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012.  Suzanne and I and the doggies drive out on the causeway to Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake. We would spend the next 3 days camping and hiking. Antelope Island was discovered in 1845 by explorers John C. Fremont and Kit Carson who is an ancestor of my grandchildren, Maddie, Izzy, Ben and Nate. While exploring Kit Carson shot a pronghorn antelope and named the island for it out of gratitude.
Antelope Island is 18 miles long and 4 miles wide.

The Great Salt Lake looks like any other lake except that it is 8 times saltier than the oceans and therefore no fish can live in it. Here's the view from our campsite looking east across the lake to the Wasatch Mountains.

Even though there are no fish in the Great Salt Lake there are brine shrimp which the sea gulls and waterfowl eat. The island is home to Pronghorn Antelope, Mule Deer, Big Horn Sheep, Coyotes and Bison.  Here are a couple of the Mule Deer that we saw.

The biggest animals that we saw were the American Bison. I learned that they are not really Buffalo like most people call them but regardless, they were huge and scary.
This herd decided to graze only about 100 ft. from our camp.

This guy got a little too close for my liking.

On our last night the sunset was spectacular.  From our camp it looked like the sky had set the Great Salt Lake on fire.