Family Adventure to Promontory Point and Spiral Jetty

I've wanted to take a trip to the north end of the Great Salt Lake since we moved to Roy. So I put it on the family goals very first this year, even before lesser things like, "Make sure we have food, water, and shelter in 2015." Way back in January, we optimistically put it on the calendar for May, and lo and behold, we found ourselves in the car headed north on Memorial Day.

We were lucky enough to have Michelle's sister Brianna with us, so she got to come along. Brianna is basically sunshine in person form, and the kids love it when she treks all the way up from BYU to stay with us. We all love it, really. Invariably she ends up staying longer than anticipated, which sometimes leads to RIDICULOUSLY early train rides back to Utah County, but I'm not complaining.

So we drove out to the middle of nowhere, everyone kept busy eating a delicious ham sandwich, including a baggie of strawberries and carrots packed for us by Leah. We got to Promontory Point just in time to watch the reenactment of the driving of the golden spike, which completed the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.

Now, I have come to love history, especially the history of the U.S. West, but folks, this ceremony was long and boring, and I cannot recommend it, especially with little kids. They need to edit that thing down to five minutes and call it good. But it was cool to see the Jupiter and the 119 huffing and puffing. Bryn still remembers the locomotive names and mentions them in casual conversation.

"Get me outta here, Dad. I want to drink some salt water!"

As soon as we could politely do so, we booked it outta there and drove another half hour on a well-maintained dirt road out to Spiral Jetty. If you need a refresher on Spiral Jetty, it's a work of landscape art created by Robert Smithson in 1970 out of black basalt rocks. It juts out quite a ways into what was the Great Salt Lake back then. The water level promptly rose right after it was finished, and it was underwater for a long time. Now the lake is at a historic low, and you have to walk out several hundred yards to get to the lake.

There were a couple dozen people there when we arrived, but it's a huge area so it didn't feel too crowded.

People have created their own little spiral jetties close by over the years. While easier to walk to, we recommend hoofing out to the original.

Salt crystals!

Note Addison jumping in the puddle at the center of the jetty.

The only one to not have the time of their life was Asa. Poor little guy was overdue for a nap, had a diaper rash, and managed to keep getting salt water in crucial locations. Eventually we peeled off his diaper and set up a picnic blanket. Once the cookies came out, he cheered up.

We took turns walking out to the lake, and that was the coolest part. It's an amazing alien landscape.

Ever since the Union Pacific finished a causeway across the lake in the 1950s, the Great Salt Lake has been divided in two, and the north end has gotten saltier and saltier. If you look at the lake from the air, the south end is blue and the north end is red from all the salt.

I just can't help posting a bazillion pictures.

He floated! I tried too, but it wasn't quite deep enough, so it just meant I was wet and salty all the way home.

Anywhere your skin touched the water quickly turned white and powdery. It's unfathomable how much salt is in that lake. Under the surface of the water is a thick salt-crystal shelf.