Never Allow Dave and Kirk On A Road Trip

When Kirk and I go on road trips we can be hazardous to the public.  Kirk is more mellow and reserved. I am just whacked out. Put us together and we are hell on caffeine.  Kirk is a nice guy and then I come around and he becomes a different creature from those who claim to know him as the nice guy at the government.  Kirk showed me this palm at Wal-Mart. This is a needle palm. Found it for $20.  It now sits in my yard. Thanks buddy. It was his passive aggressive behavior that led me to by this one.

This next photo I could not bring over so I linked to it. When we stopped in Green River, Utah we caught this dude filling up his plane at a gas station.  He said he was from Eagle Mountain, Utah. What ever floats your boat.

To the left is the Gieco Gecko or something like that. Kirk had to get a shot of this lizard while I wanted to run naked through the brush of the Book Cliffs.  Of course with not willing to put up with my antics Kirk took this photo and threatened to leave me behind. Fine, whatever dude!

Kirk always wanted his photo taken somewhere cool. When we were at Antelope Island in Utah we went into this old ranch house. Kirk thought that he would look bitchin next to this old phonograph. Now I admit this is not exactly a desert photo at first glance.  But it was taken inside an old shack in the desert so don't give me any grief. Note the camouflage fatigues don't go with the coat.

Now some people do not believe that me and Kirk are actually environmentally friendly. This is not true. It is true that I like fossil fuels burning amass producing electricity.  Kirk, I am not sure what he actually likes to see mechanical wise, but I digress.  In this link you can see us actually hugging a tree. It is a beautiful trunk isn't it. The dude couldn't get his damn finger out of the way ruining the true effect. I tried to get Kirk to hug me, but he declined. No sense of humor!

This again is at Antelope Island. Notice the green bog in

to the right. This bog was still nice and green well into November 2009. Now if you don't think that we don't just stumble across the most beautiful places on earth then you have no sense of imagination and you don't know Kirk and Yours Truly.  We both agreed that a swim in the bog was not on the adventure agenda for the day.

The Mojave Desert brings the best out in both of us. On this trip we were in Moapa, Nevada in an area known as Warm Springs.  Kirk thought that road trip means taking a picture of the road.  Ansel Adams he is not, but I have to give him credit for actually capturing some palms on either side of the road.

This lovely rock formation is at the Garden of the Gods outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Kirk had us hiking all over this place. He took a while finding it too. Nonetheless I got this lovely photo.  Kirk insisted that blistered our feet were we hike on.  I screamed abuse, but nobody listened. His girls just laughed at me and my teenage son refused to admit he had a father.

Finally, to end this lovely entry when I went out to Colorado last year Kirk showed us Cherry Hill State Park which is an earlier entry in this blog of ours.  But I thought it fitting to let you all know that the place is full of plains yucca.  Plains yucca go from the Front Range of the Rockies east to the boring land of the Midwest US.  At least there is something that is yucca in this post.  Had I not lost my photos of Bennett, Colorado I would have included them, but my computer crashed and the Garden of the Gods one was one of the few that I had left.

Now I wish I had more time to give you the lowdown on the odd couple relationship that Kirk and I have on road trips.  On one trip back from St. George, Utah a thunderstorm came in around Beaver, Utah. I screamed "Run for your life! Hurricane! Its the Apocalypse!" One mother and her kids got the hell out of there, Kirk nearly fainted, and I am not sure what came over me, but I am sure it was the adrenalin rush of caffeine.

Antelope Island State Park, Utah

Out in the Great Salt Lake is an area of the Great Basin that is not quite like the typical sagebrush, juniper covered basin and range.  Antelope Island State Park, Utah is one true place of beauty and oddities.

The island is reached through the Great Salt Lake via a causeway from Syracuse, Utah about 20 miles north of Salt Lake City.

Once you get to the island one of the first things to see is the bison herd. One of the Wests "free roaming" herds of about 600 to 1000 bison call the mountain island home. They can be found throughout the island grazing in alone or in small herds.

From Antelope Island you can see the vast expanse   of the Great Salt Lake in all directions. Off in the distance are the Wasatch Mountains a sub range of the Rockies.

Antelope Island has been used by various people for thousands of years. First, American Indians utilized the island for game and fresh water from the natural springs that come out of various places throughout the island.

When the Mormons arrived in 1847 they soon to began to have an impact.  The island was used for ranching for many years.  

One ranch remains on the south end of the island and is maintained by the State of Utah.  The ranch has an old ranch house, a barn with artifacts of early 20th Century ranching life, a picnic area, and plenty of areas for exploration.

Antelope Island was turned over the The State of Utah in the early 1980s. Surrounded by the Great Salt Lake the island maintains a unique desert environment.  Sometimes though in drought years the island can be reached by land as the lake has dried up enough to actually make the island a peninsula, a mass of land surrounded on three sides by water.

The island derives its name from herds of Pronghorn, which are of the sheep family, but not true antelope. They live on the island along side the buffalo.  The bison are not native to the island but were introduced by concerned conservationists about the mass slaughter of the plains bison that occurred in the 19th Century.

The herd has been maintained ever since by both private and now Utah State. Each year the bison are rounded up and herded into a corral area on the north of the island for immunization, the sale of excess animals to public and private interests, and to individuals for slaughter. This is done because the ecosystem of the island can only sustain a certain number of buffalo at any given time and also to keep the genetic stock fresh.

The topography of the island is wetlands near the Great Salt Lake, plains and foothills ascending toward the mountain peak.  A variety of microclimates exist on the island due to the Great Salt Lake moderating the weather of an otherwise hot summer and cold winter.

Antelope Island is truly a desert within a desert. Its unique isolation, its moderated climate, its topography from rock outcroppings to dunes on the northeast give the island a variety of landscapes unique to areas of the Great Basin.

The beauty of the desert is that things are not always what they seem. A desert can be hot in the summer, cold in the winter, have varying degrees of climate and wildlife.

The top predators on the island are probably the bobcat and the coyote, though some do suspect cougar may be present.

Lake Bonneville receded thousands of years ago leaving behind the Great Salt Lake and a basin and range type of province.  The eastern Great Basin has more temperate climate than the central Great Basin due to the  Wasatch Mountains and their weather regulation.  Antelope Island takes that a step further by extending the non frost season longer than other areas around the Wasatch Mountain Range.

I hope to go back and camp in the dunes again like I did as a child. This is one place to get away from civilization and still be able to see it or get to it across the Great Salt Lake. Antelope Island is truly worth exploring for the desert enthusiast.