It was a Friday afternoon and we were bored. So instead of stopping at the local Wal-Mart, we just kept on driving. Twenty minutes later we found ourselves crossing an inland ocean and arriving in a bygone era. An era where buffalo and antelope still roam wild and the ambiance of the old west can still be experienced first hand.

Antelope Island is the island that time forgot. While it is literally only a couple of miles from Utah’s largest metropolitan area, as the crow (or in this case Seagull) flies, only a very few traces of mankind’s existence can be found there. For residents and visitors of Utah’s Wasatch Front, it is a sojourn into solitude that won’t break the bank.

To access this state park it is necessary to cross the salty “moat” that has kept the island separated from suburbia: the Great Salt Lake. A drive across the causeway is an experience in and of itself. One can watch flocks of seagulls glide effortlessly alongside their car window or gaze upon a multitude of shorebirds bobbing on the waves and diving in the reeds for a snack. The shoreside crossing makes it easy to forget that you are hundreds of miles away from the nearest ocean and in the second driest state in the US. However, within moments of arriving on the island itself, that fact becomes apparent. Far from being a lush, tropical, verdant, oasis surrounded with fish-friendly waters, this arid island is as inhospitable and barren as any rangeland in the west. And the super-saline waters of the Great Salt Lake are as forbidding to fish as dry land.

On this particular day, we only had a limited amount of time, and so we had to go into “couch potato explorer” mode and stay in the car for the majority of the time. Nonetheless, even from the car we were treated to spectacular views and fantastic windshield wildlife viewing.

At the end of the road we came to an old homestead where true pioneers had set up a ranch decades earlier. The house and barns are relics of the past and allow visitors to take a stroll through time. Antique farm equipment, kitchen “appliances” and furniture add to the ambiance.

Antelope Island doesn’t boast the impressive geology of southern Utah. It doesn’t display nearly as much wildlife as Yellowstone. There’s no fishing or hunting either. But for those looking for a truly unique getaway only minutes from a major metropolitan region, few areas can compete with Antelope Island.