Spring Break Trip to Antelope Island

I'm exhausted.  We spent the day at Antelope Island (well, the afternoon and evening- we didn't get out as early as planned) and it was great.  Except for the biting gnats.  Jeremy had been checking the website to see if there was any problem with the biting gnats (we decided not to go last Summer because apparently they were so bad).  When we went during Fall Break there was no problem with bugs.  Jeremy didn't check the website this morning (not until we got home tonight).  Apparently they mentioned on there that the biting gnats had hatched.
Luckily they were only bad in certain parts of the island, like where we were first going to go hiking and where we were later going to go to the beach.  Yeah, that wasn't pleasant.  But there wasn't a problem on the other side of the island where we took a little hike and by the ranch we visited again.

It was still a great trip.  We saw lots of different animals- more than last time we were there.
We were able to sing, "Home on the Range," because we saw bison (buffalo), pronghorns (antelope), and deer.

We also saw rabbits.
And lots of different birds including a few we need to identify (too tired to look them up tonight).  We saw one running down the road and how it moved made me think of Compsognathus from Jurassic Park. 

Several birds posed nicely for us.
We saw plenty of bugs.
We even saw a coyote on our way back along the causeway.  I couldn't get a still picture but was able to get a video of it.
We also saw lots and lots of horses.  Several people riding horses passed us as we were hiking.  And passed the bison that were coming down the hill as we were eating lunch in the van.  That was fun to watch the bison as they got closer to us while we were sitting safely in the van.  Our timing was good, too, because as we were about to drive off from that spot, we saw a bison walking along the trail we had been on a little while before.
It was a great day on the island but we won't be going again too soon... because of the biting gnats.