Leaving Antelope

Sunday July 24, 2011
Bear Lake State Park, Utah
Big Creek Campground Site #9

I was very sorry to leave Antelope Island. 
It was such a fabulous environment.
A great variety of animals all wandering freely,
a 26 campsite campground in which
Winnona was the only camper for at least
one of the nights we were there.
And only on Saturday night were nearly
all the sites full.
The environment is as close to pristine as
it gets these days I think.  The island
looks pretty nearly like it must have looked
to the first white settlers in the mid 1800’s
especially on the South end.

Don’t miss Antelope Island
but come in cooler temperatures
and before or after the biting bugs
(see previous blog for dates).

Now it’s time to move on.
So we were up and out running before packing up.

This time I took my Ipod shuffle and stayed
on the roads.   David took his camera
and found these guys also out for exercise on the road.

I have no “western birds” book and
can’t find them in my Eastern one
so if you know who they are, let me know.
They sure are fancy ground birds of some sort.

After my favorite part of running,
the home stretch,

we had breakfast, completed the
departure lists and went to the dump
station with no casualties this time.
We were on the road just after 11am.

We stopped for groceries in the
neighboring town of Syracuse, Utah,
topped up Winnona’s gas tank at
the low price of $3.309 and started
the long pull up the Wasatch Mountains.

 

along the beautiful Logan River
which sadly has several dams on it
which control the flow
and thus it changed its look
several times as we climbed
the mountains

and eventually went DOWN
on a long stretch of 8% grade

to Bear Lake on the Utah Idaho border.

Bear Lake was formed nearly 28,000 years ago
by earthquake activity. 
Its aqua-blue color is the result of calcium carbonates
suspended in the lake. 
Its elevation is 5923 feet
(read that as MUCH cooler than Antelope Island). 
It is 20 miles long, 8 miles wide
and 208’ deep at its deepest end. 
It covers 112 square miles.
This is a BIG LAKE.

Part of the lake is in Utah and thus Bear Lake State Park Utah.
And part of it is in Idaho,
where there is also a Bear Lake State Park.
They seem to have put the state line right down the middle.

Confused yet?

Well stick around.
We are going to spend a little bit of time
over the next 10 days in each one.
So we’ll get it all straightened out.

We’ll be here in Utah for the next 3 days enjoying the
cooler temperatures and electricity.

We pulled into site #9 at Big Creek Campground and found
it and the other two campgrounds as well
filled to the gills with families and boats,
kids and dogs, water craft of all sorts and noise.

David said he’d never seen so many children under
the age of 5 in one place other than
a pre-school.

Here are some samples of what we saw on our after
dinner walk.

Walkin’ the dog  :-)
Poor thing could hardly keep up

 

Quiet hours here at the park are from 10 PM to 7AM.
So we were trying to figure out what was going on
with all the fireworks going off long after the ”curfew”.  
David jokingly asked if it was
Brigham Young’s Birthday or something.

So I googled “Utah Holiday July 24”
and found out that
Yesiree…today is Pioneer Day
also known as The Day of Deliverance,
an official Utah Holiday celebrating the entry of
Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon Pioneers
into the Salt Lake Valley.

We learned that many businesses
and all government offices are closed
and that the holiday generates a good amount of road
traffic.   We had wondered why there were SO
many cars on the road into and out of Bear Lake
on a Sunday afternoon.
Utah Department of Public Safety statistics show
that Pioneer Day has the second highest traffic fatality
rate in Utah right behind July 4th.
I thought Mormons were alcohol free?

We felt lucky to have arrived safely not having
known the risk we were taking.

We’re thinking tomorrow is probably the holiday
“day off” since today is Sunday
like when July 4th falls on a Sunday. 
So some folks and their kids and toys
will have to pack up to get back to work on Tuesday
and things will calm down.

Or at least we’re hoping.
A big change from Antelope Island
that’s for sure.