Family Vacation 2012: Day 1

I have a lot of good memories of family vacations growing up so I've been anxious to begin going on trips with my own little family.  This year the boys seemed big enough to handle a short trip without too much drama, so we decided to try something fairly close to test the family vacation waters: Salt Lake City  

On the first day of our vacation, we also found ourselves testing the waters of the Great Salt Lake.  

My big bro Seth (highest above), and his beautiful wife Karen (directly above), and their gorgeous newborn baby Sylvia (with Mama) were lovely enough to take us on a trip to Antelope Island, which is just a short drive from their home in Layton.  



The water was surprisingly warm and you could walk out into it for quite a distance without it getting much deeper than two feet, making it a perfect water play place for little boys. The Salt Lake also lived up to its reputation of super buoyancy.  Abe, a natural sinker, was excited to be able to actually float around without any effort at all.  The water was a wee bit on the gross side, particularly with little salt fly pupate shells floating around on the water, but that's just one of those things you don't think about too hard.  There were lots of other people playing in the water too, so we figured it couldn't be too bad.   (And the people were surprisingly diverse-- I heard two or three other languages being spoken.)

Then we came ashore. 

Doesn't Soren look like he's on the catwalk?  You strut that stuff, boyfriend.

Both the children felt compelled to wear my sunglasses.  Liam does look pretty hip wearing them.

We spent a few minutes on our beach blanket eating goldfish and granola bars and then, due to Liam's casual sand-walking pace, made the longest-ever recorded trek from the beach.  It was so very, very hot.  Liam looked every bit the part of the desert-stranded wanderer.  He even started smacking the side of his head like he was having some sort of hallucination (but no-- he wasn't-- he just does stuff like that). By the time we reached the top of the hill at the end of the beach, we were sweaty and crusted with salt and quite grateful for the free showers provided by the park.

Doesn't this picture just look classically American?   

We drove around briefly in the 90 degree weather looking for wildlife but the bison and deer and antelope are all apparently much smarter than people and had holed up until evening. 

Then we went back to Seth and Karen's house.  Seth grilled us some DELICIOUS corn-on-the-cob, burgers, and hot dogs.  Karen made her prize-winning fruit salad.  We sat on their porch and talked while the kids wasted their food and played in the back yard.  I cuddled that tiny little Sylvie as much as I could.  It was a perfect evening.  

Then we checked into our motel in Bountiful (which was fabulous!) and began the first of two horrible nights'  sleep.