Road Trip: Antelope Island and Salt Lake City, Utah

The next morning we headed to Salt Lake City.  On the way out of Evanston, we stopped at a great breakfast place called Jody's.  It was my ideal kind of breakfast place; there was a folksy mural on the wall, and they had biscuits and gravy on the menu.  Even better, you could substitute the toast option on any meal with a 1/2 order of biscuits and gravy -- which is the perfect amount of biscuits and gravy, in my book.  They also had corned beef hash and eggs, which is Rob's favorite.  After we loaded up on calories, we headed to Antelope Island.

Antelope Island is the biggest island in the Great Salt Lake.  I'd never been to Salt Lake City or seen the Great Salt Lake, so it seemed like a cool place to check out.  Aside from the pronghorn antelope for which it is named, the island is fabled to have several other kinds of interesting wildlife, including bison.  Well pronghorn and bison were the only wildlife that we saw.  We saw lots of bison and a few pronghorn.  We drove around the island, looking for wildlife, and occasionally stopping to get out (mostly to take pictures of said wildlife).  It was pretty hot and sunny when we were there, so hiking was definitely not an option.  

There is a beach on the north end of the island, and I wanted to wade into the Great Salt Lake, so we walked down to the water to do that.  It's a pretty long walk down to the water (maybe 10 minutes) and well, to be honest, it was a bit anti-climactic.  I tasted the water, and it was very salty.  I think we drove around all of the island that could be driven around, some of it multiple times, and it was still only a couple hour activity.  So worth going to if you are in Salt Lake City, but not amazing.

After that, we headed to Salt Lake City.  The nice thing about Salt Lake City is it has actual hotels.  Like the kinds of places that you might actually stay at even if you weren't on a grubby road trip.  So that was nice.  After much deliberation (because there are so many hotels and they were all so cheap), we decided to stay at a Marriott that Rob thought he'd stayed at before.  Everything was super deserted and the hotel bar was closed.  But the Starbucks in the lobby was open, phew.  The other great thing about Salt Lake City is they have real restaurants, that you can look up on OpenTable and make reservations at.  Since Rob has been to Salt Lake City a bunch of times for work, he actually knew some places that he suggested we go.  He suggested a sushi place for dinner (Takashi).  I was super suspicious of the concept of sushi in Utah, but he swore it was a trendy sushi place that I'd like.  Takashi was actually closed (due to COVID) but the bar right next to it (Post Office Place) was open and was serving both of their menus.  So it was even trendier than expected.  But it was awesome.  Tasty drinks, tasty sushi.  Mmmm.

Later in the evening, after recovering from the sushi and drinks, we went to Penguin Brothers, this very cute pink ice cream sandwich shoppe (with a "pe" at the end).  We went there, got our ice cream to go, and then headed to a Supercharger for a charge.  I got the s'mores ice cream on chocolate cookies.  The ice cream was *amazing*.  It was graham cracker ice cream with marshmallows and chocolate in it, which is like a million times more interesting than a chocolate-based s'more ice cream.  I'm sad to report that I didn't get a picture of my awesome ice cream :(  I've been contemplating an attempt at graham cracker ice cream ever since.