The Liquid Lake of Lies

Our tour guide here in SLC is packing our days will fun-filled sights!  We began our whirl-wind tour with a stop at the Mormon Temple (Temple Square).  Truthfully, I forgot all about this stop until I looked at the pictures - so much to do, so much to say!  But here's a pic:

Next on our tour was the State House - didn't rate for a picture, I guess, 'cause I forgot to take one...sorry.

The next big stop was the Great Salt Lake!  I don't know if it was the weather today, or if it's always so eerily cool, but it was most certainly a sight to behold.  It was like the sky and the lake just melted together.  It was hard to really tell where one ended and the other began!  Here, see for yourself!

Here are the pros and the cons of wading, or swimming in the Great Salt Lake:

Pro: the water is a perfect temperature!
Con: you have to walk 200+ yards on scalding hot sand to get there...

Pro: the sandy lake-bed floor is so soft underneath your feet!
Con: you must endure many jagged rocks to get the soft sand....

Pro: how often can you wade in water 3 times saltier than the ocean and only 5% less salty than the Dead Sea?
Con: you are surrounded by Brine Shrimp and they stink!....

Pro: rocks can skip really, really far (like 8 skips - amazing!!)!!
Con: there are zillions of Brine Flies...no, I'm not exaggerating - see for yourself:

Pro: some people think there are healing properties in the salty water.
Con: when the first settlers got to the Salt Lake valley they were thirsty, they saw a great big, beautiful lake...ah, stop film - it tastes NASTY (I know I tried it).  And so it gets the label 'the Liquid Lake of Lies'....

So what's the verdict?  Sara and I agree, it's something that you should do once in your life (and be thankful that you only have to do it once!).

We drove around Antelope State Park and looked at the many buffalo (yea, kind of odd, but just go with it, don't ask questions); we visited a farm that was actively working until 1981, and then - hot and weary, desert thirst unquenched from our encounter with the lake of lies we did what every intelligent traveler would do: we hit an ice cream place. 

We topped off our tour with a stop at Cabela's, an out-of-this-world sporting good store.  The store is huge with a 'museum' of stuffed animals, maybe 100 mounted heads and an aquarium befitting of a fully paid admission price!  Really quite a place (maybe best suited to those liking stuffed dead things, but really amazing...).

So although wading in the Great Salt Lake might not be top of my 'do it again' list - it does make for beautiful pictures.  Here's one more for you - good night!