Living Planet Aquarium Visit

 The Living Planet Aquarium from Draper, Utah sent two outreach educators to our area to talk about the water cycle and show some animals. This was a great opportunity for the kids to learn some science and learn about the bigger world around them.

 The kids started off on the floor.

 But soon they got to see the water cycle model up close. It was really cool.

 The kids made movements as they reenacted the parts of the water cycle.

 Soon it was time for the rain cycle dance.

 Jackie and Holly brought some animals with them to show, including this garter snake, which the students could touch.

 Then it was time for a neat experiment--pump up a bottle with a little bit of rubbing alcohol in it to make a cloud. They got to do it over and over again and really enjoyed it.

 A red-spotted toad.

A gopher snake.

The kids were really well-behaved and enjoyed the special presentation. Thanks Living Planet Aquarium for coming way out into the desert to share!

Desert Destination: Antelope Island

 We visited Antelope Island over Memorial Day weekend, and it blew away my expectations. Anyone visiting the Salt Lake City area should take a trip out here. Antelope Island is one of ten islands in the Great Salt Lake, and it's the largest, covering about 42 square miles.

 To reach it you cross a seven-mile causeway. During really low water years, the island becomes a peninsula. During really high water years (like in the early 80's), the road was inundated and the island closed for many years until funding could be found to rebuild.

 Once we got to the island, we went to the visitor center and checked out some interesting exhibits, picked up a junior ranger booklet, and watched the park film. Then we decided to head out and check out a trail.

We chose the Buffalo Point Trail, 0.3 miles long but a little steep and rocky. The kids thought we were hiking to the moon, they weren't very cooperative.

For those a little more enthusiastic about hiking, Antelope Island has about 20 miles of trails. It also has trail runs! I might have to come back for one of those! Some of the trails are open to horseback riding and mountain biking. (Another good reason to return!)

 The views were great. The Great Salt Lake is so large you can almost feel like you're at the ocean. And the high salt content (about 25% at times) makes it even smell a little like the ocean, although it's too salty for fish to survive in the lake.

 Birdwatching is a major attraction on Antelope Island. We had closeup views of some chukar. (Here's a bird list for Antelope Island.)

 At the top of the trail were some really cool rocks, Cambrian Tintic Quartzite. These rocks are old (550 million years old), but there are even older rocks on the island. Precambrian rocks (Farmington Canyon Complex, 1.7 billion years old) are found in the park, and they're as old as the rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. (You can download a geology map of the island here.)

 It was a little windy, but oh, so beautiful. Sitting up there on the rocks, looking out over the Great Salt Lake made me feel quite serene. It's a little piece of peace so close to the hustle and bustle of the Wasatch Front.

 We saw quite a few bison as we drove and stopped to take a few photos. The island was settled in the late 1840s, with the LDS Church controlling the ranch, which ran cattle and sheep on the island, until 1870. Then John Dooly, Sr. purchased the island. He set up the Island Improvement Company, which ran the ranches and managed the island for almost a century, from 1884 until 1981.  The State of Utah purchased the northern part of the island in 1969 and the southern part, including the historic Fielding Garr Ranch, in 1881, and removed the cattle and sheep. (Source)

Twelve bison were taken to Antelope Island in 1893 (or 1897--I saw both dates listed). This was the start of a herd that became the largest in the United States for a time (despite an attempt to hunt them all in 1926). Today, with a herd of 550-700 bison, it's one of the largest publicly owned bison herds in the nation.

Every October, they hold a bison roundup--and they let the public participate! If you'd like to round up bison, you can, with your own horse or a concessionaire horse (check out the Antelope Island State Park website for details).  Sounds like fun!

By the way, if you're like us and wonder how could animals survive on a desert island surrounded by water that is too salty to drink, there are several freshwater springs on the island that wildlife use. Other wildlife on the island include mule deer, pronghorn (the 'antelope' for which the island is named), bighorn sheep, bobcats, and porcupine.

We couldn't stay long, but we'll be back, just like the California gulls. Antelope Island has a couple campgrounds, and that would be a great way to experience the island. There's also swimming in summer and showers to rinse off the salt and sand.

If you do visit, remember insect repellent. This can be a buggy place!


To see posts about other great spots to visit in northern Utah, check out:
Golden Spike National Historic Site
Hill Aerospace Museum
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge
Utah State Railroad Museum

Fish Monitoring at Gandy Salt Marsh

 A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) with least chub (Iotichthys phlegethontis) monitoring at Gandy Salt Marsh in the West Desert of Utah. Least chub are tiny fish that only live in a handful of places, remnants from Lake Bonneville days that now are clinging to existence. They favor small springs that are difficult to reach.

As we headed to the site, I couldn't help but notice the numerous bushes with white flowers. It took me a little while to realize that they are white rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus albidus). It was kind of neat to see something so familiar looking but with a twist. 

 Here are the flowers closeup.

I also photographed many, many more plants, but will spare you on this post, and get back to the main subject.

 My friend Kevin was leading the trip, and when we reached this spring to put in minnow traps, he had to do some deep thinking. Fences have been installed to prevent cattle from falling into the springs, which can be deceptively shallow-looking. Many a cow have taken the plunge, never to exit. The fences are good for keeping the cows out, but they were supposed to be removed for the sampling. Since they weren't, we had to find a work-around.

 Installing the traps involved some gymnastics and barbed-wire avoidance skills. Life as a biologist is interesting!

 While we were putting in traps, we saw lots of frogs, including Columbia spotted frogs (above) and northern leopard frogs (below).

 In the spring, egg mass surveys are done in this area, and it can be really difficult to find any adults. It's neat to see them.

 Some of the springs have slurping mud bottoms that feel a little like quicksand (or what I imagine quicksand would feel like, since I've never actually been in real quicksand). I sort of ended up in the mud, because somehow mud and I have a long and complex relationship. Like maybe I still want to be like Desert Girl and jump in mud puddles but now just get sucked into mud holes and muddy caves. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant experience, but it was nice to rinse off later in the day!

 After we installed all the minnow traps, it was time for some physical habitat surveys. We divided up into groups, as we not only had UDWR folks, but also people from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Southern Nevada Water Authority. We went in different directions. My group's direction took us here:

 The water levels are definitely lower in the fall, restricting the fish to the deepest springs. During the spring, after snow melt, the large playa fills with water and is an import migratory stop for birds. In the fall, it makes for fast walking.

 After the physical habitat surveys and lunch, it was time to go check the minnow traps. Many were empty, but a few had lots of fish, and not always in places where we thought we'd find a lot.

 Every fish was counted and measured before being returned to its spring.

We found speckled dace, Utah chub (on the left, above), and least chub (on the right, above).

It was a good day, and I really enjoyed the company and interesting terrain. Hopefully the least chub will continue to do well in their very specialized habitat.

p.s. You can find out lots more about the Gandy area in Chapter 11 of my book.

Our Newest Pet

 We have a new pet. Desert Girl is the instigator. How can I resist when she asks for a new pet?

 This time around it's a "caterpilly." Or rather, two of them (although only photographed above).

When we explained to Desert Girl that her pets had been eating our corn, she started calling them "bad caterpillies." It was pretty funny.

This "caterpilly" is a corn earworm. Fortunately quite harmless (to hold, not so great for crops). Some caterpillars can give you quite a rash just touching them.

Most likely these pets won't last too long, but I love how Desert Girl is so excited about exploring the natural world around her.

What's your favorite non-traditional pet?

Destination: Angel Lake near Wells, Nevada

 One of Nevada's many mountain ranges is the East Humboldt Range, a 30-mile long range in the northeastern part of the state near Wells, Nevada. We decided to make it part of our July trip, largely because the 12-mile Angel Lake Scenic Byway (Nevada Highway 231, seasonally open) goes right up to Angel Lake in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

 The stormy weather didn't deter us as we climbed several thousand feet from the valley to the 8,379-foot elevation lake. Before the road gets really steep and windy is the Angel Creek Campground, which would be a good destination for those with bigger vehicles (like RVs). The Angel Lake Campground awaits those with smaller vehicles at the end of the road. There's a $5 parking fee at the end of the road for those who want to get out of their vehicles and check out the lake and/or picnic.

Lake Dimensions. The road takes you to within fifty feet of Angel Lake, named for Warren M. Angel of nearby Clover Valley. The lake covers 13 acres with a maximum depth of about 35 feet. A dam was added to the lake by early settlers to increase its capacity for irrigation.

Fish. The lake contains brook trout, rainbow trout, tiger trout, and speckled dace. According to the Nevada Department of Wildlife website about Angel Lake, about 4,800 rainbow trout are stocked during the summer. Creel surveys show anglers catch about 1 to 2 trout per hour, with a limit of five per day. Fish size is generally 8.5 to 11 inches.

My husband and kids decided to try their luck fishing, which is one of the most popular activities at the lake. I was ready to stretch my legs after the long car ride and set out for a hike around the lake.

Glaciology. Angel Lake is a tarn, otherwise known as a mountain lake formed in a cirque. A glacier once stood hundreds of feet high here, flowing down towards the valley below. (On the day we visited, the sky was hazy and the storms made it gray, so it was hard to see down to the desert below.)

One of the coolest things about visiting Angel Lake was thinking about the glaciers. The last glaciation in the Great Basin was called the Angel Lake glaciation, with the type locality being right where we were standing. Researchers Ben Laabs, Jeff Munroe, and others have conducted cosmogenic ¹⁰Be surface-exposure dating of boulders in the area. By studying the dates of how long boulders in moraines have been exposed, they've concluded that the end of the Angel Lake glaciation was 19,300 years ago, give or take 1,000 years. This was the same time that the Laurentide Ice Sheet was retreating. This was also before glaciers in the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch mountains retreated, and before the huge pleistocene Lakes Bonneville and Lahontan had reached their zenith. What does this timing mean? The researchers say that more research is needed.

Wildflowers. What comes after the glaciers leave? Pioneering plants like the bright fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium),  one of my favorite flowers. Fireweed likes to grow in areas that have been disturbed by  fires, avalanches, glacial retreats, and more. It likes lots of sun and can grow quickly.

Many other wildflowers were in abundance. The flora in the East Humboldts and nearby Ruby Mountains are similar to that in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah.

 And with plants come animals, like this beautiful blue butterfly.

 Wildlife. A couple rock wrens hung out with me as I took photos.

Probably the best-known birds on the mountain range are introduced Himalayan Snowcocks. They apparently are most-often found around Hole-in-the-Mountain peak, the highest peak of the range at 11,306 ft. The range also has bighorn sheep (with 20 reintroduced in February 2013), introduced mountain goats, mountain lions, mule deer, bobcat, coyote, and more.

Lakes and Hiking. Although Angel Lake is the most easily accessed lake in the East Humboldts, it's not the only lake. I was a bit surprised to find that the range has many more lakes, including Smith Lake, Greys Lake, Winchell Lake, Boulder Lakes, Lizzie's Basin, and Steele Lake. You can access some of them on the two main hiking trails: a four-mile hike to Winchell Lake that begins at a trailhead below Angel Lake on the paved road; and a 25-mile hike that begins at Angel Lake, goes around the north end of the range to Greys Lake 5 miles away on the west side, and then continues along the west side to Ackler Creek (11 miles) and Boulder Lake (18 miles).

To find out more about hiking to some of the other lakes, check out the details on this informative website about hiking in East Humboldts (and Rubies).

As often happens in the mountains, the storms passed and the sun came out, brightening the carpet of wildflowers. I was particularly impressed by the display of wildflowers, even though we were just at 8300 feet. The latitude and higher precipitation allows for a lower timberline and overall lower elevation for wildflowers that I expected to see at higher elevations.

Wilderness.  A quick note on wilderness: although you can drive to Angel Lake, most of the rest of the East Humboldt Range is accessible only by foot or horseback. In 1989, 36,000 acres were designated as the East Humboldt Wilderness.

Geology. The mountains rising above Angel Lake look beautiful, with Greys Peak at the top of the photo above at 10, 674 ft. The East Humboldt Range is a metamorphic core complex, meaning that the older rocks have been pushed up and are exposed instead of being overlain by younger rock layers. This allows you to look up from Angel Lake and see some of the oldest rocks in Nevada: 2.5 billion year old gneiss. How cool is that to see rocks so old from a lake that is not so old (at least geologically speaking!).

Lake core. The sun also beckoned an angler to go out in his float tube. That would be a really fun way to visit the lake! Researchers have taken a raft out on the lake to retrieve a sample of the bottom (a sediment core) to study the past climate of the area over the last 7,000 years. They were able to see ash from the Mount Mazama explosion (the one that created Crater Lake in Oregon). They also learned quite a bit more, which you can read about here.

 When I got back to the dam (probably a leisurely 45-60 minutes after I had set out around the lake), I found the angling success wasn't so good for my family.

 But the kids sure did have fun getting in the chilly water!

I'd like to go back to Angel Lake and the East Humboldts and check out more of the beautiful scenery.

 And if we time it right, we may make it again for the drag races in Wells.

Ah, you've got to love the desert!

I couldn't find much information about Angel Lake when we set out to go there. Hopefully this compilation will help those who desire to know more. And if you know of other websites about Angel Lake, please leave a comment! Thanks!