Antelope Island

Well, this year I will write about our summer vacation to take Emily back to EFY at BYU. It was an especially enjoyable vacation for me. Dad, Amy, Joshua and I went to Antelope Island one day. We decided to “swim” in the Great Salt Lake. Well, it was quite the walk out to the lake and the day was very hot. It was a totally desolate place. We finally arrived at the water and started walking out into the lake. The water was filled with brine shrimp. It was more like a “soup” than a lake. I remember I just kept walking & walking out into the lake. I walked maybe half a mile into the water. I just kept waiting for the soup to clear up a bit but it never did. Finally when I was about chest deep I decided it was about time to try and float. Za za zing my tennis shoes shot up out of the water like an air balloon. I almost panicked because I felt like I was losing my balance. But soon I got the knack of it all and I laid my head back and totally relaxed. We floated and floated and floated for an hour or more until we noticed that we’d floated all the way back to shore and were floating in about 12 inches of water. The water was filthy. I went “swimming” in all my clothes which include my garments. It was so funny when we got back to Grandma’s house and I took my clothes off to get a shower. Many many brine shrimp fell all over Grandma’s bathroom floor. They were stuck all over me. Yuck. We forgot the camera and decided that we’d go back to Antelope island and hike back out and swim so we could take some pictures. But each day that came & went - well we just couldn’t muster up the courage to get into that brine shrimp infested “soup” again. One more addition to the story that was really funny. Amy and I walked back up from the lake to get into the car. The car was gone. Now Krista, Amy and I already had that experience once before at StoneRidge mall. We went into the mall via a Macy’s store. We exited the mall via Macy’s as well. Well we hunted for the car for over 40 minutes. We finally went back inside the store and asked someone to help us. I told them I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. They asked me WHICH Macy’s store we came into the mall through. That was the first time we realized that there were two Macy’s stores. Case solved - car found. Well back at the Great Salt Lake, Amy and I were going through it all again. No car! Well there weren’t two Macy’s stores this time and then when I was pretty convinced that someone had stolen our car & remembering the two Macy’s stores we realized that there were two different bath houses and parking lots. We had drifted almost half a mile to the other bath house. So we trudged down to the other house and there was our car right where we left it. That’s twice!
Well, still on the same vacation, we drove up to Bear Lake. It was a real hot day (again). We got out of the car (at a rest area) and rested in the shade - just laying in the shade and snoozing. Well Joshua and I left Bill and Amy sleeping and we walked to the lake. The very shallow water was (unlike the Great Salt Lake) crystal clear! And I mean CRYSTAL! But… the water was about 110 degrees warm! 98 degrees is luke warm and this was way above luke. It felt so warm and yet it was so clear. Finally we talked Bill into coming down. He and I walked out (again) about chest deep. Again we were in our clothes - no swim suits. We had so much fun playing in the amazingly warm clear water. It was an especially nice day. Joshua thoroughly enjoyed playing in the warm water - so much so that I was tempted not to drive back to Kaysville but to get a motel room up there so we could swim and play some more the next day. We did buy three raspberry shakes from 3 different establishments, though. Bear Lake area is known for their wonderful raspberries (we were there too early in the year to experience fresh ones - dang) but we did enjoy their raspberry shakes. I don’t recall now which one I liked best - I think it was the first one that we tried. But since I’m not sure, I’ll just have to try one from all three places again the next time I visit Bear Lake. .
Mom’s 2003
Christmas story