Antelope Island 2026

On Tuesday Kristin and I took an early morning trip to Antelope Island to watch the sunrise over the buffalo.

 

It was another beautiful morning in Utah. Antelope Island is filled with buffalo (or bison as some people call them), and it has a few antelope as well although we did not see any. We came to here a couple years ago and loved it, so we decided to come back.

Antelope Island sits north of Salt Lake City and is a large island in the Great Salt Lake. It seems that a lot of schools in the area take field trips here to study the Great Salt Lake, as we have seen the buses full of kids both times we came here.

 

As I mentioned before, Antelope Island is home to a plethora of buffalo and we saw one right next to the welcome sign. Chief thought it would be a good idea to get a picture touching it.

 

 

He soon learned that you need to give the buffalo their space

 

 

After that little tussle, we moved on, driving up the eastern shore of the island.

Here is a map of the route we traveled on the island.

 

 

My father taught me that you always have to get some pictures of the rental car because it is usually better than the piece of junk you normally drive. This way you can act like a big shot. If anyone works for Jeep and wants to use these photos in an advertisement, I will entertain offers.

 

 

 

These yellow flowers are called rabbitbrush or rubber rabbitbrush and they are abundant in Utah, often growing on the side of the road. They make for a good foreground to my landscape photos. Below we see them with the sun rising over the Wasatch Mountains in the background, beyond the Great Salt Lake.

 

And, of course, you can’t go anywhere in Utah without running into Susan.

 

Not much traffic out here. 

 

As we drove down the eastern shore of Antelope Island we saw many buffalo.

 

 

This guy got into some kind of battle. 

Awww, its a baby-buff! 

Why did the buffalo cross the road? 

Rare shot of a buffalo galloping (sort of). 

These two young-uns squared off for a very short mock fight. 

There seemed to be some kind of persistent haze over the Great Salt Lake.

 

Uh oh, he spotted me. 

 

This cow got all dolled up for the picture shoot, donning some rabbit-brush earrings.

 

 

 

 

After our drive down the eastern shore, we headed to Buffalo Point Trail and hiked up to the peak to get a better view of the Great Salt Lake. The peak is about 600 feet higher than the lake.

 

 

 

Chief made it to the summit:

 

 

 

 

 

They are still trying to tell me that these are bison, but I don’t care, they’re buffalo to me and always will be, daggumm-it.