Great Salt Lake & Medicine Bow

It's really difficult to find the Great Salt Lake. The only directions we could find were in a guide brochure at our hotel in Salt Lake City, and they were wrong. They said to get off at exit 335, when 332 is the correct exit. I just assumed that surely there would be signs telling us where to get off the highway—no directions needed. ...I thought.

Without signs, and carrying incorrect directions, we still managed to wind our way around neighborhoods till we came to the entrance. Phew. The park ranger who we paid to get in said it happens every day, and apologized. Strange.

Looking at these photos, would you say it was worth the effort though? Ohhh, yeaaa. Wow.

Fish can't live in the Great Salt Lake, but it's full of tiny brine shrimp that the birds love to eat. The girls spent half the day scooping brine shrimp up into their cupped hands, looking at them, and then scooping up more.

It was so shallow that we had to walk out very far to sit down in a foot of water. Perfect for little ones.

Since I already posted photos of our last day, at the awesome Salt Lake City Library, on The Spunky Coconut, I'll skip ahead now to day one of our drive home.

Shortly after passing Rawlins, Wyoming on I-80, we saw a sign for a scenic route and took it. Scenic route 130 took us to Saratoga, Wyoming—a really cute little place. Just past the town of Saratoga we saw these little cabins, and decided to spend the night there.

The cabins were on the edge of Medicine Bow National Forest. In the morning we had some Fiona's GF strawberry quinoa cereal and almond milk, then got back into the minivan.

Medicine Bow National Forest...

There was still lots of snow up there, even in the summer. It was beautiful. I've never seen light steel grey rock cliffs like that before. There were also several lakes and streams all along the road.

We drove through Medicine Bow on 130 E, which took us to Centennial and then Laramie, where we got onto 287 S.

287 S took us into Colorado to Fort Collins, where I took I-25 the rest of the way home to Longmont. From Fort Collins we were were home in no time, got the car unpacked, and had laundry in the washing machine before dinner. It was nice to be home in the afternoon rather than late in the evening.

Today was our first full day back, and although we love to travel, we are so happy to be home :-)

Love, Kelly