A Campout at Antelope Island State Park

May 10-12, 2017

I've visited Antelope Island State Park once before and thought it would be a good last place to camp before my final run to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

The weather was changing as I left my campsite at Grande Staircase Escalante National Monument.  My campsite was right along the Hole-in-the-Rock road, at an intersection with a little road to other dispersed campgrounds.  I picked it only because it held the first hammock trees I'd see in five miles of the road. I only had a hammock, sleeping bag, and water out, so packing up was easy. I ended up spending at least three extra hours taking pictures of the amazing skies.

My three day home

One of many pictures I HAD to stop for

Another sky scene

By mid morning, I was getting pretty hungry, since I had been up since five. I asked my GPS to find me a restaurant, and it came up with a dozy/  It was the Capital Reef Inn and Cafe in Torrey, Utah.  I loved the interior of the building with light, highly polished floors and a beautiful layout, as well as an interesting gift store.  I ordered a veggie omelet with a side of hash browns and a smoked trout filet. It was fabulous, and the omelet was better than I make, and I think I'm pretty good.

The day continued to get more cloudy and I ran into a few showers before I got to Great Salt Lake. And get getting later and later from my plan of getting there in time to spend several hours exploring the park.

Storms and light

But I had a lot of fun just getting across the causeway to the park, after getting a site for two nights.
The ever changing clouds had followed me here and I enjoyed the views as well as the quite far away birds playing along the shore.

View from the causeway to Antelope Island State Park

This willet was calling at the top of his voice 

Black Neck Stilt Pair

Willet showing his beautiful wings

Hungry avocets

My camp site. The night temperatures were going down to the low forties so I wimped out and put up my tent, not long before a big rain. ,

The next morning I was up before the sun i time to catch a golden sunrise and have the park mostly to myself.

The yellow sunrise

The weather rapidly deteriorated but I had good light for photos for a few hours 

Sky over the lake

Franklin's Gulls

I think these are semipalmated sandpipers - please leave a comment if I'm wrong

California gull - Utah's state bird - there are 75-80,000 birds breed on Great Salt Lake Islands

Just another view as I drove around the island

Storm a borning

Only three bulls were visible 

The rest of the herd was about a 17 mile round trip hike away

I spent the middle of the day at a library editing pictures and working on blogs, as well as eating lunch out. Again we had a huge thunderstorm during the late afternoon. Finally, just at sunset, a little piece of the sky cleared, making a dramatic sunset.

Sunset over Great Salt Lake

I had stayed up late the evening before, so didn't get started as soon as I had hoped. Then, not long after I got to Highway 15 and started heading north, my car started weaving. I pulled off and found a gas station and discovered my back tire was almost flat. I filled it and looked up a discount tire store. It was only 6 miles behind me so I carefully drove back to it. There I found that I had to replace my tire.  So this trip cost me more than an month's  income in care repairs. Had to fix the air conditioner, get a new battery and a new tire.  

I had called Jackie, the office manager to be sure I could make it to the refuge.  She drives a four-wheel drive truck and told me she thought my little Honda Fit could make it through the wet spots. But I wouldn't get to the refuge until after dark so I decided to get a motel room in Idaho Falls and come in the next day.  I had a lovely quiet night, then shopped for a few groceries and figured how to make them all fit in the loaded car. The rest of the trip was a piece of cake. 

Almost home 

Home

I'm still not quite finished with my first blue bird survey and have a lot of boxes to repair or replace. I've got a new short-term assignment of hauling water to a herd of horses we are using to study how grazing affects an invasive.  It requires me to fill the 250 gallon tank of our fire truck,  then drive the truck a couple of miles down the road, and through a field, across one fairly large ditch and a few smaller ones. My boss  drove with me for my first successful attempt and declared me OK to go on my own.  He said I can also wash down our one cement outdoor toilet since I know how to drive the truck.  I'll have to learn how to turn on the pump to make the water spray. 

And I've met the two techs I'll be spraying and pulling invasive weeds with. They are going to be fun to work with.  We'll be spending three days together at an invasive weed conference where we'll have to take a test. 

Jim, a volunteer who has been here two years of the ones I've been here is back after taking last summer to bicycle around Europe, before spending the winter in India. He has a friend who will also soon come to volunteer here. We are also overrun with young people working on the sage grouse project and now a project that will measure the effect of cheat grass on songbird reproduction. It's going to be an interesting summer. 

I'm publishing this just after taking a course on invasive weeds and managing them, especially by spraying. I passed two tests and will receive a certification for spraying invasive weeds. I'm also learning to use an app to enter sites with invasive weeds, into a data base shared by several western states.  I and two summer techs will soon be spraying or pulling weeds, revisiting the sites we treated last year and monitoring the refuge for other invaders.