Antelope Island

When I was a 5th grader way back in the dark ages, one of my favorite field trips was going to Antelope Island. I don't remember much about it except that when we got in the water we actually floated very easily. It has always been somewhere I wanted to go as an adult and take my children, but we always have an excuse to do something else.

So I put it on the Girl Scout calendar.

When I put things on the scout calendar, they are pretty much set in stone. That said, we were supposed to go in April, but when I called out there to make arrangements, they told me about the biting gnats and I decided we could just move our trip until all of those gnats were gone.

The date we chose was today, July 3. The Ranger's name was Charity and she was happy to do a 1-hour class with us before we got in the water. We arranged for 3:00 and we showed up at the appointed place about 2:50 pm. It was hot!

We took a few minutes slathering sunscreen and spraying for bugs and then we made our way to the pavilion. Her class was fun and informative! Even my sweetie was impressed. Then we made our way to the beach.

I think he should enter this one.

The water level is very low this year and it was about half a mile walk to get to the water. There were tons of brine flies and some of the kids were pretty upset about them, but we pushed through and got ourselves in the water. We had to wade out quite a ways before the flies left us alone, but once the kids got past the fact that they were swimming in dirty water, they loved the buoyancy of the salt and they played and splashed for about an hour.

When they were finally finished, we hiked back up the beach and some of the kids showered before we loaded into the vans. We drove around the island, exploring the different lookout points from the window since it was getting late. My sweetie wanted to get a good picture for his work's photo contest, so he kept stopping to take pictures. We were pretty excited to get this close to a real antelope!

The girls opted to leave the island and find a park to grill our hot dogs and eat dinner. They didn't want to share their food with the brine flies. It was a good choice. We found a quiet little park in Syracuse and we had the place to ourselves.

Most of us were still covered with salt and sand, but the kids really enjoyed this adventure. My sweetie says we are going back for Labor Day. I can think of a few (hundred) other places I'd rather visit without quite so many bugs.

I'll let you know.