Blog 1.4

Finally!!! Thats how it felt as Chantelle and I boarded our flight to Utah. We didn’t have much luck with travel during the pandemic as restrictions, natural disasters and everything in-between some how managed to prevent us from going anywhere every time we made plans. So it felt extremely nice to finally get on a plane and see something new.

Smoke from a nearby forest fire engulfs the mountains near Seattle

We ended up flying out of Kelowna, B.C to Seattle, WA, and then caught a connecting flight to Salt Lake City. We landed in Salt Lake City around 11 pm, where we quickly caught a cab over to the rental place and picked up our camper van.

Because we wanted to catch sunrise at the Bonneville Salt Flats we had another 2 hour drive ahead of us, thankfully the drive was more or less one really long straight road. When we arrived near the flats we found a spot to park and crashed out for a couple hours.

We woke up around 6 am and drove down to the end of the road to watch the sunrise at the flats. I was a bit apprehensive about driving on to the flats because there was some water on parts of it, thankfully the other vehicle in front of us went out on to it and I was able to follow their tracks along a safe route where I wouldn’t get stuck.

Our van for the trip parked out on the salt flats

After the sun had fully come up we got back on the road and found a Walmart to get some groceries (sandwich things, chips, granola bars) before heading back towards Salt Lake City.

We took a quick drive around the downtown core, grabbed a quick bite to eat and found a car wash to clean off all the salt stuck to the Van. Downtown Salt Lake City was surprisingly smaller then I anticipated.

After we had finished up there it was time to get back on the road and head onward to Antelope Island.

Driving back in to Salt Lake City 📸 (Chantelle)

Antelope Island is kind of a funny name for this state park/animal reserve because it actually has a lot more bison than it does antelope, and supposedly the pronghorn antelope which are found there, aren’t even antelope according to some authorities 😅

Heading to Antelope Island 📸 (Chantelle)

Chantelle and I by the Antelope Island sign

We ended up spending several hours in the park and managed to see some bison, pronghorns, a single buck mule and some lizards. The bison were everywhere and fairly easy to get a photo of, but the pronghorn and buck mule ended up being very elusive. We spotted several of them throughout the park but they were usually really far away or well camouflaged in some trees.

Jamie taking photos of the salt flats 📸 (Chantelle)

Chantelle using binoculars to look at bison in the distance

A Pronghorn grazes as a family of bison pass by behind it

A bison fights off the thousands of flies surrounding it

Our next destination, Canyonlands, was about a 5.5 hour drive, so we ended up leaving Antelope island around 5:30 pm and started to head south. Wanting some food before the long drive ahead we stopped at In-N-Out burgers, as neither of us had, had them before (a solid 9 out of 10 as far as fast food goes).

Once we were back on the road we managed to see a tiny bit of red rock in the daylight before the sunset disappeared, leaving us to imagine what the new geography around us would look like when it wasn't hidden in darkness.

Moab city was where we would stay for the night, being the closest town to Canyonlands. We parked on a side road in town, I quickly backed up my photos and prepped my bag so I would be all ready to go for sunrise the next day, unfortunately even the most prepared can make mistakes at 5 am, but more about that in the day two post 😏

Blog 1.5

Blog 1.3