Exploring Antelope Island State Park

One of the things I wanted to do on my month-long trek across the United States was visit some national parks. Top on my list was Arches National Park in southern Utah. While I lived and worked in Utah for over ten years, somehow I never managed to visit this picturesque national park with its iconic 65-foot tall freestanding natural arch near Moab. I naturally found plenty of lesser known places to explore throughout the state, but before I knew it I had moved away without ever having experienced life at this spectacular place featured on Utah’s license plates and visited by travelers from around the world.

It’s ironic that I would now venture over 2000 miles from home to visit a place that was once only a four-hour drive from where I lived. I planned to be at Arches for two days of camping by Sept. 30. A car breakdown in Wyoming (another story for another time) delayed my arrival and the next day the United States closed its national parks in response to a government shutdown.

So if you find yourself in a situation like I was where the closure of a national park is affecting your travel plans and you’re not brave enough to sneak in (which I don't endorse), you might consider some really cool state parks. When the national parks shut down on this trip, I was lucky that Utah’s governor requested that its state parks honor National Park Service passes during the federal government shutdown. The passes were valid for day-use only.

Utah has also published a very helpful travel advisory with plenty of state-run alternatives to closed national parks. Since I was in Utah during the first part of the shutdown, I decided to visit a place I once frequented while working as a newspaper journalist but had never really had time to thoroughly explore. Antelope Island State Park on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake is open year-round and offers camping, biking, boating and mountain biking. It’s also a great place to view wildlife including a herd of over 500 bison, some Pronghorn antelope, coyotes, badgers, bobcats, hawks and falcons.

After several hours exploring the island, I saw a bison walking slowly across a dry patch of the Great Salt Lake normally covered by water. A few moments later, a scrawny coyote creeps out from behind some brush and stealthily trails the bison. Something else startles it and it runs back into hiding. It’s not a national park, but Antelope Island State Park is open and it’s a great alternative.