Saturday we took a trip out on the lake farther than I've been before. As you can see from my map we took off at a little park just north of Vineyard (a little community west of Orem and north of UVU). The park needs some green, but there are two picnic tables and a bike path to enjoy there. It is hiding down the hill from the road, so it can be easily missed even if you are looking for it. The bike path is paved and had a number of families enjoying the summer weather.
The park has a little bit of a beach right on the lake which is nice and a long stretch of shallow sandy water, but it wasn't my favorite park. I may be a little bias-my memories of it go back before it was a park to huge bonfire parties with truckloads of pallets. The fires have been banned now and replaced with a semi-manicured picnic area. Maybe if they could keep a little grass at least, but maybe the soil makes that unfeasible.
After enjoying the lake for a while we turned around to go back and found that we had drifted north (a common thing on the lake. I recommend looking behind you on a regular basis so you know where you are.) Thinking we had drifted south, I ended up missing the park and adding an unexpected loop to our trip. We ended up going nearly 5 miles in the end.
My review of the Vineyard area is pretty low. I would rather go south or stay on a river, where most of these posts are about, but if you live up north, or you want a quick way to get out on the body of the lake, this is not a bad option.
It turns out that crossing the lake is approximately a 5-6 mile trip, one way, if you go straight the whole time. Maybe that will happen next week...
