Salt Lake City, Utah

June 14, 2026

We said farewell to the red rocks of southern Utah and headed to the Great Salt Lake, stopping for the night near the southern end of the Wasatch mountain range.

As we drove away from Moab, the local topography progressively shrunk in stature

After a while, we felt like we were on the moon or something

As we approached the Wasatch mountains, things started getting interesting again

We stopped for the night at a quiet, free dispersed camping spot and had a very uneventful night's stay. That's usually a good thing when we are boondocking.

Not many other people camping with us--just a lone tent and another RV (not in this picture)

Continuing north the next morning alongside the Wasatch mountains

The greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area seemed to go on forever

The causeway to Antelope Island State Park--our next destination

Antelope Island State Park in the Great Salt Lake was our next destination. Back in the 1980s, it actually was an island, but since then, the lake levels have receded quite a bit, and it's not exactly an island anymore. Being a terminal lake with no outlet, the lake naturally rises and falls, depending upon weather conditions, but a recent prolonged drought combined with increased usage of the water upstream has caused the water level to drop considerably, as shown in the below sets of pictures:

1986 satellite image

2022 satellite image (very similar to today)

There is a local movement to fill the lake back up in time for the 2034 Olympics. We wish them the best of luck.

View of the dry lake bed on our way to Antelope Island

Sad looking boat dock

Our campsite had a view of the lake, but we could tell that it was much farther away than it once was.

The campground was very quiet the entire time we were there. Even when it filled up on the weekend, the only sounds we really heard were the birds chirping. In particular, we were entertained by the northern mockingbird whose imitations of car alarms, other electronic sounds, insects, and random bird-tweets were an almost constant sound track to our stay.

Now for our less-than-stellar experiences of this campground...

The lake, despite being the main attraction, was also the main annoyance. First off, it smelled. Think pungent seaside mixed with sulphur and a side of sewer gas thrown in for good measure. It was surprisingly difficult to track down on the internet exactly why the lake smells the way it does. The most common answers are that it is a combination of rotting brine shrimp and algae, anaerobic decomposition of organic matter along the muddy shore, and sewage being dumped into the lake. Whatever it was, it was not very pleasant, and when the wind blew just right--eeewwww!

To describe the other unpleasantries of the lake, let's take a walk to the shoreline...

Our walk to the shoreline was motivated by two things. The first thing was we saw something from our campsite in the distance that we thought was a buffalo (they have them here), but it didn't move for two days. We figured it was either a dead buffalo or a rock (or something else), and we ought to investigate and find out for sure. The other thing was that we had never been to the Great Salt Lake, and since it was right there in front of us, we ought to go check it out.

So, we took a walk to the shore from our campsite, which ended up taking a lot longer than we anticipated because it was a lot further away than it looked.

The long walk to the shore. If you look closely a little left of center, there was a mysterious blob that we had to check out. 😉

Looking back at the campground

Can you say "desolate"?

Approaching the item of interest--definitely not a buffalo

Upon doing a Google Lens on the object, the first hit that came up was a news story with the headline, "Huge Mine Washed Up on Ayshire Coast Sparks Alert". Considering that we were nowhere near Scotland, and also considering that it would be pretty absurd to mine the Great Salt Lake (in the sense of ordinance, that is--there have been plenty of metal and mineral mining operations around the lake), we continued down the list of search results. One of the next hits was the headline "This Hunk of Metal Fell from Space and Landed in California". That referred to a chunk of a communications satellite that fell onto a farmer's field. Interesting, but probably not the same as this thing. After a lot more pictures of sea mines that washed up on Japanese beaches and a couple of alien UFO conjectures, we settled on "large metal buoy" as being the most likely identification. Having satisfied our curiosity, we marched onward toward the shore, which was still a surprising distance away.

It was at this point where we started to notice the dead birds. We have occasionally encountered dead fish along a shore, but Salt Lake doesn't have any fish (except the brine shrimp). So, the dead bird thing was a bit disconcerting. At first it was just one...

Eeewww--dead bird

...but then we saw they were all over the place...

Dead birds everywhere!

Okay, dead birds--not great, but they looked pretty desiccated and didn't smell any worse than the rest of our surroundings (which by the way, was starting to smell worse).

But then came the clouds of flies.

We remembered encountering swarms of alkali flies when we had visited Mono Lake in California. They were kind of fun because they would swarm as you approached, but they stayed in their place and left you alone. These flies here were brine flies, and while reportedly harmless, they absolutely did not leave you alone. As we got closer to the shore, there were millions of them that arose from the ground as you approached and completely surrounded you. And then they followed you when you tried to leave. Just like Pigpen from the Peanuts.

With our mouths tightly shut, we got out of there quickly, and it took several yards of jogging before we finally lost them. We hurried back to the campsite and didn't look back.

The rather uninviting shoreline of the Great Salt Lake (You can't see the millions of brine flies, but they were there!)

We later learned that the dead birds were eared grebes that had died of an avian flu outbreak, most likely this past November. According to John Luft, the program manager for the DWR's Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program,

“The birds people are seeing on the shores died a while back. They probably died back in November or so. But the interesting thing with the Great Salt Lake, with the high salt content, it pickles those birds and so they don’t decay or decompose. The birds will continue to wash up through the next few months.”

Nice.

It's too bad we didn't get to see any grebes that were alive, because they are pretty cool looking.

As far as our campsite was away from the lake, we still experienced some of its pestilence occasionally, usually in the form of noseeums. For those who have not experienced noseeums, you are truly missing out. They are tiny gnats (you can hardly see them--hence the name "no-see-ums") with oversized teeth that take tiny chunks of skin off of your person. With Julie, they went after her head. They seemed to prefer Rick's ankles over his head for some reason. Fortunately, they only appeared occasionally, and did not terrorize us too much. At least we weren't here in July and August when the spiders come out in full force!

And that about covers most of the unpleasantries of this trip. We actually didn't do much here, partly because the scenery didn't appeal too much, but mostly because we wanted a break from the past few weeks of activity. And that was just fine by us. We did go into Salt Lake City to attend mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine and to check out the temple area of the Latter Day Saints which was just down the street from the cathedral.

Salt Lake City is quite attractive against the Wasatch mountains

The Capitol is also quite attractive

Temple Square--the headquarters for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)

The temple was closed for renovations, but they normally don't let just anyone inside anyway.

The temple square area was very pleasantly landscaped

The Cathedral of the Madeleine

It's hard to get a good shot of a large building when you are this close!

The inside of the cathedral

On our last day, we figured we should check out more of the "island" and give it a chance to redeem itself. We had originally planned on a bike ride, but ultimately decided to just tour in our car because we were feeling kind of lazy. As it turned out, the park is pretty big, so we were able to cover more ground in the car anyway.

In years past, this road would have hugged the lake shore

There's still a little bit of lake out there!

Further down the road, the lake was gone

We were wondering how they were keeping the bison on the island, then we saw this fence that had been installed on the lake bed

Toward the end of the park, the road turned to gravel

We didn't bother taking the hiking trail to the south tip of the "island"

We drove up to an overlook that gave us a better view of the lake bed

Back at the north end of the park, there were some decent overlooks where you could see water.

Trail to Ladyfinger Point

Random people

Julie kind of wanted to walk down to the beach to see if there were any interesting birds, but she still had PTSD from the earlier shore visit, and Rick absolutely was having none of it.

Our final stop was a trail up to Buffalo Point. This turned out to be the best spot in the park to see lake rather than dry lake bed.

White Rock Bay (not quite as bay-like as it once was)

At the top of Buffalo Point

Looking down at our lush campground. The causeway can be seen in the distance.

The landscape came alive that evening at sunset 🙂:

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