Epic Trip Out West, Day Eleven: Antelope Island, Temple Square

Today was a day for tourism, again thanks to Naaman, this time with his sister, Trieste. We piled into his tan car and sailed off for Antelope Island under a sky washed with cumulus clouds. Antelope Island is a nature reserve, a haven for bison, pronghorn deer, and a host of birds. We drove out to the island on a road built on a levy, with stretches of the Great Salt Lake’s water reflecting sky and snowy mountains on either side. 

The Great Salt Lake is the remnant of a prehistoric lake that spanned most of western Utah back in the day. Fed by three mineral-rich rivers (the Jordan, Weber, and Bear), the lake only loses water through evaporation, so the water gets saltier every year. The largest creatures that inhabit its cloudy waters are brine shrimp the size of fingernail clippings. These, coupled with vast amounts of brine flies, draw a host of birds. Avocets, black-and-white wading birds with orange shoulder and upturned bills, feed in the shallows while American coots, duck-like birds with black plumage and white bills, paddle around in the deeper areas. “Deeper” is a relative term— although the Great Salt Lake covers 1,700 square miles, on an average year it barely gets deeper than 30 feet.

The visitor center boasted a dizzying amount of information (Antelope Island contains rocks older than the bottom of the Grand Canyon, apparently), but my favorite part was a clip from a silent film shot on location on the island. Mostly a bloodbath of bison hunting and dramatic scenes of pioneers getting caught in quicksand, it contained such thought-provoking dialogue (written neatly in white Times font) such as “If Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, could get out west with all them wives, then I can sure ‘nough do it with my wagons!” We also visited a working cattle ranch with historical buildings that showed the history of the ranch from the first white settlers in the mid-1800s up until present day.

Our day wasn’t done yet, and we left Antelope Island behind for our next destination, Salt Lake City. The city name is deceptive— I expected it to have a waterfront, but it’s set far away from the lake itself, probably because the size of the lake fluctuates so much from year to year.

After supper at a fast-food restaurant called Greek Slouvaki, we headed to Temple Square. The LDS temple is a huge white stone building, a mix of castle and cathedral-like architecture that focuses more on geometrical beauty than ornate decoration. Loud tourists with cameras and LDS missionaries with name tags bearing the flag patterns of their home countries clip-clopped along the sidewalks beside neatly-planted flower beds. Our tour guides were two young women from Finland and Taiwan, respectively, and I couldn’t pronounce either of their names. They led us up a spiraling ramp inside the visitors’ center to a room painted floor to sloping ceiling with breathtaking murals of a night sky wreathed with clouds, planets and stars. In the middle of the room, sharp white against the backdrop, stood a twelve-foot marble statue of Jesus, his arms spread wide, his face, Arian and Roman-nosed, gazing down at a row of benches where tourists and pilgrims alike sat in contemplation.

By this time the sisters, as everyone called them, had discovered that I was Protestant (I usually just refer to myself as “Christian,” but so do the people of LDS), so they focused on sharing their testimonies with me. I always answered as neutrally as possible. We marveled at the acoustics of the tabernacle (you could clearly hear a pin drop from a hundred feet away) and I took pictures of the organ that boasted over 11,000 pipes. In the south visitors center, a to-scale model of the temple gave me an outsider’s view into its hotel-like furnishings, and my cultural sensitivity went out the window when I asked Trieste, “Why are there cows in the basement?” (The oxen around the baptismal fount represent the Twelve Tribes of Israel.)

After a tour of the LDS conference center, we wandered out into the nighttime air and back to Temple Square. We looked up at the temple, flooded with lights. A hazy moon, nearly full, hovered beside the white edifice. I’ve never seen the man in the moon: she has always been a woman to me, her eyes dark and shadowed, her mouth open in a wail of horror. The temple was silent, and around us, Salt Lake City dwindled to shadows, with nothing but the soft rush of cars of the murmur of tourists, settling in for the night like birds.

~Lisa Shafter 

Money spent today: $10.12

Leeway so far: $60.22