Utah - Day 3: Great Salt Lake

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Two exciting days at Utah deserts brought a craving for more of it inside us! However, we had an evening flight back to the Bay Area from Salt Lake City on Monday.

We reached Salt Lake City on Monday morning around 2:15 am and stayed at Metropolitan Inn in the downtown. We checked-in and crashed to the beds. To our great surprise, they had “tempurpedic” mattresses! It was so comfortable! Not to mention, we over slept the next morning and woke up just half an hour before the check-out time! We called the front desk and requested one hour extension for check-out!

We found an Indian restaurant nearby. When we reached there, we found out that it was closed due to the long weekend. Luckily, we found an Indo-Nepali restaurant “Himalayan Kitchen” next to it! They had a lunch buffet. Food was quite tasty and we were really hungry from the previous night’s “gas station dinner to go”.

It started raining heavily by the time we finished lunch! We didn’t know what to see in the city. However, I had read somewhere that Salt Lake City’s Temple Square is one of the most visited places in Utah. So, we decided to check it out. Temple Square has some history behind it. It is huge church campus situated right in middle of the downtown!

We also drove around in the downtown and saw State Capitol building, City Hall, etc. Then, we decided of going to the Great Salt Lake. We didn’t know if they had any water activities or anything. Also, it was raining a lot! We just thought of driving to Antelope Island State Park situated right in the middle of the lake.

Salt Lake is quite big and salty! It is western hemisphere’s largest lake. Some area of the lake has around 3-27% salinity compared to world oceans’ average 3.5% salinity! This is the reason it is called “America’s Dead Sea”.

Antelope Island is connected with a mainland by a road. It is not an isolated island. Every year hundreds of species of birds migrate here during various seasons. Native animals of the island include bison, mule deer, antelopes, wild cats, etc.

We stopped by at the visitor center, a lookout, and Buffalo Point. We also did a small hike at the Buffalo point to have a nice panoramic view of the lake and mountains around.

We soon drove back to the airport and returned the rental car. Our flight back to bay area was quite good. Thanks to JetBlue we watched Russell Peters and other shows in the flight.

Some useful links:
Antelope Island State Park

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