Brian and Julie’s last day. We were in Salt Lake City, so had to go see the great Salt Lake. The lake is 75 miles long and 35 miles wide. It is not a very deep lake, it averages 14 feet with the deepest part being only 30 feet.
When we walked by the marina, it appeared that the boats sat higher in the water. There was no information saying they actually sat higher, it was just our conjecture. The salt content is as follows: Great Salt Lake 25%, Ocean 3.5%. The reason the lake is so salty is there are four rivers that bring water into the lake, but there is no outlet from the lake. The only escape for water is through evaporation, leaving the salts and minerals behind. In the past 10,000 years, 4 billion tons of salt has collected in the lake.
The only life in the lake is brine shrimp, brine flies and bacteria. The shrimp and flies eat the bacteria which keeps the lake clean. However, the Great Salt Lake is a major stop for migrating birds, as they feast on the shrimp and flies. The amount of flies, which are the size of gnats is astounding. If you stepped near the shoreline, you would just see a wave of flies. It was really cool. It is estimated that there are over 300 million individual flies per linear mile of shoreline. Fortunately, they are harmless and have no interest in biting humans.
Western spotted orb weaver spiders were also in abundance, as they live off the flies as well. There were webs everywhere.
Enjoy the views.
Our next stop was a soda shop called Fiz. Julie heard about these “dirty” soda shops and wanted to make sure to try one. Mormons are not allowed to drink alcohol, coffee or hot tea, so they drink these sodas. All they sell at the shop is sodas and the menu was 5 pages. They have a page of combinations with coke, sprite or mountain dew as the base. A page with root beer or lemonade as the base. Finally, they have a page with water as the base. So many combinations of flavors and creams and juices, etc. They were all very sweet.
Our final stop of the day was at Liberty Park, which had the Tracy Aviary. I saw several birds I had never seen before. It was a beautiful setting with lots of flowers and trees and well kept living areas for the birds. We saw several birds being fed, which was cool and gross at the same time as they laid out dead mice for them to eat. There were a couple of the keepers walking around with a vulture as if they were walking their kid. The vulture would walk along the path and then hop to one of the keepers for a treat of mice/rabbit meat.
They had eagles and provided this interesting fact — Eagles will reuse their nest for many years, adding new material and making it larger each year. The largest bald eagle nest was 9.5 feet wide and 20 feet tall.
Enjoy the birds.
We then enjoyed our last evening with Brian and Julie before taking them to the airport.
August 28th was a travel day from Salt Lake City to Craters of the Moon National Monument.
til next time…
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