The Great Salt Lake

 

I always get restless this time of year, it starts feeling warm, and I want to go out and hike, but there's still snow up in the mountains. So I try to find naturey things to do lower in the valley.

Supposedly, somewhere on the shores of The Great Salt Lake sits a random green sphere. This was what brought me out to the lake. Unfortunately, I never did find this sphere but I still got in a good approximately 2 mile hike.

As I said I was looking for this sphere which I kind of knew the general area it should be, a little south of the Saltaire. There is a frontage rd. next to i80 that gives you opportunity to get to the lake… ish. it is a rather small, shoulder less road that has those little binocular signs indicating a scenic area, right next to signs saying no parking next 2 miles. ??? The first pullout available was rather crowded. I would have liked to take photos here, but apparently this is a rather popular photographic area as there were at least 12 people taking pictures. So we moved on to the next one. There was a small dirt road pullout that indicated it was some sort of nature research trail. Again, it was fenced off, but was easy to get through.

This is the first site I wanted to see. An old abandoned train and unknown building. I will return to this.

One of the interesting things about the Great Salt Lake is that its water levels fluctuate drastically. We are currently in a low levels cycle. It was a mile from where we parked to the shore, yet where we parked is is obvious that that was shoreline during high levels.

It took me a while to determine what I was looking at, but at this point I decided it was once an old pier?

It was a little spongy here, so we decided to head back towards the what appears to be man created raised area.

I love that there are signs of river beds

Yep still convinced this was once a pier.

And then we found this… it seems there was a pumping station of some sort?

 

The unknown structure narrowed and heightened.

UPDATE 3/18/11: A friend informs me this was one a railroad trestle that crossed the lake called the Lucin Cutoff.

Another interesting thing about The Great Salt Lake is that, even though it is a rather large lake, it is really rather shallow. Averaging at about 13 feet deep. Due to this it’s shores are kind of… skewompous.

Did you know that the Great Salt Lake is the 4th largest terminal lake? A terminal lake has inlets, but no outlets. Water only decreases due to evaporation, which is why it is so salty. Supposedly, a human can float on the surface, although I have never tried this.

   End of the line, with a salty foam.

 

Landis found a walking stick! Which apparently was good enough that he kept it.

 

I decided that the man made raised path must have originally been a marina, during high waters anyway.

Random letter?

Upon returning to the car we noticed the throng of photographers had left the train, so even though I had lost prime lighting I decided to head over there as well.

“Temple Of The Birds” Totally unofficial title of this unknown building but I think it fits quite well. Judging by what I saw on my hike out to the shore, I think this was originally some sort of pumping station. It is now home to more graffiti than building, but it is still rather interesting.

I hate graffiti. I really do, however, I found most of the graffiti at this location to be rather interesting.

All and all, even though I never found what I was looking for, I had a good time, and I enjoyed my first spring hike of the year.

My goal this year is to hit some of the more out of the way little known places. So look forward to that, and feel free to poke me if I fail at this goal.

Final result: 9 out of 10 Squirrels. Only losing 1 squirrel due to having to crawl through a fence. (and maybe a slight disappointment on not finding my “Easter egg”.) Other than that, it was a very easy hike, great one to do during the early spring time when you want to do some nature. Plus there is some cool stuff to see.