Salty

About a year ago, I had a chance to meet Erika, a friend I made through blogging over twelve years ago. Erika lives on the other side of the country, but she came to Salt Lake for an archery tournament. Prior to her trip, she asked for some ideas of things to do while here, and I sent her some suggestions. While she was here, we kept in touch about the sights she was seeing and the things she was doing. She was only here for a few short days, and most of her visit was spent at the Salt Palace, a convention center, for archery events. One morning, she texted me that they were thinking about going to Antelope Island.

This was a moment in my life that gave me pause. What do you do when you know "the truth" about the Great Salt Lake, and your friend comes to Utah hoping to spend her spare time enjoying some of the wonderful things your state has to offer, and Antelope Island comes up? Granted, I haven't been to Antelope Island in over twenty years, so my memory of it may be hazy, but it is part of the Great Salt Lake landscape, and the Great Salt Lake is kind of Utah's dirty, little secret.

You see, the Great Salt Lake, while an absolute phenomenon, is nasty. It smells horrible, and the "beach" is covered in bugs and the carcasses of dead birds.

This picture was taken at the Great Salt Lake, and it's completely deceiving! We went out there one day with the kayaks just to see what it would be like. What you don't see in this photo:

• The scent of rot
• The beach littered in liquor bottles
• The bugs so thick you're scared to breathe
• The film of salt caked on our skin
• The fact that no one really kayaks or plays in the water there

This video more accurately shows what the Great Salt Lake is like:

(I took this video the day we went kayaking. This was what we had to walk through to get to the water. The bugs were so bad my phone couldn't even handle the image!)

I only lightly warned Erika. I was hesitant to say anything because I hadn't been to Antelope Island for so long that I wasn't sure if I had an accurate memory of it.

When we met up in person, and I asked her about Antelope Island, she very politely expressed that it was not what they expected. She showed me a picture of their rental car plastered in brine flies.

The Great Salt is a freak of nature. It makes you wonder and squirm all at once! It is so cool and so gross. It's also very, very big (hence the "great") so there are a lot of different ways to experience the lake. For example, here's a photo of Zoe walking barefoot on the salt flats:

Yesterday afternoon Scotty and I were trying to decide how to spend a few hours of unscheduled time. We felt obligated to work on the basement, but we decided to go on a family adventure instead. We haven't been doing very many activities as a family lately because... basement.

We ended up going exploring in the marshy outskirts of the Great Salt Lake.

Our goal was to find a water pipe that travels all the way from South Jordan. Our friend who works for the water company told Scotty that he'd been there the other day working and it had been full of fish.

We found it!

But there weren't any fish.

While journeying out to the pipe, Nicky did some metal detecting. 

He got the metal detector for Christmas, but he has yet to find anything cooler than rusty nuts and bolts. 

In the areas around the Great Salt Lake, there's always a risk of mud. You can be walking on solid ground one second and then sinking in mud the next. These are some of my footprints

.

It looks like snow, but no, no. That's salt!

Daisy lost her shoe twice in the mud. She also fell over in the mud. 

That's our Daisy.

And it wasn't enough for each child to have ten pounds of mud on the bottom of their shoes. They had to get their hands in there, too. 

Zoe celebrating mud

After we located the pipe, Nicky and Scotty saw an abandoned truck in the distance, so we headed out to see the truck. You would have thought these two had found a twenty dollar bill! They were so excited!

The kids explored the truck and played in the mud.

(So much mud).

(Deep breaths, Mama. Everyone is washable). 

I, too, was covered in mud. 

We had a lot of fun and came home filthy and windblown. Both signs of a good adventure! We traipsed two miles through salty, muddy earth. 

So thank you, Great Salt Lake. For your weirdness. For your variety. And for not stinking so bad yesterday (cooler weather helps).