Antelope Island State Park / Bonneville Salt Flats

I wanted to come to Salt Lake City to see two things, the temple and the lake. Well, we found out that you can actually drive onto an island in the middle of the lake, so we just had to do that.


The lake goes all the way to the horizon in some spots. The weather was not to good when we went, but you can still see just how huge this lake is. The island is supposed to have lots of antelope and buffalo. You will see the only antelope we saw the whole time and the buffalo decided to hide on the other side of the island.

The lake was still quite low, but we were told that the water from the snow melt had not come down from the mountains yet, and it would rise as soon as it gets warmer. The weather here has been unusually cold. We are almost to early to see the lake in his full beauty.

Since it was still early in the afternoon, we decided to go on to the Bonneville Salt Flats. I had no idea what this place was all about. So we hopped onto Route 80 and headed west. We passed Morton Salt and for the first time I realized where my table salt comes from when I saw these huge mountains of salt. OMG, it was totally cool. Doug used to do a lot of traveling in his job and he had told me that Route 80 goes in a perfectly straight line towards Nevada and guess what people, he was right. We drove in a perfectly straight line for about 47 miles. There are no turns, no hills, no curves, it was very impressive. And then we arrived at Bonneville Salt Flats, which consists of a sign and the largest sheet of salt I have ever seen.

It is indescribable. We saw a white pickup truck drive onto the salt towards the race track and just disappear on the horizon. My mind kept saying this is ice and it should be really cold. It was sooooo windy, but did not stop us from getting out of the car. It is 60 degrees and you touch the salt and it is warm. The feeling is indescribable.


Want to see salt close up?