My name is Jeff Manwaring, and I'm the owner of Exclusive Excursions. And we do guided boat tours on the Great Salt Lake.
I've always just had a dream of doing boat tours and I tried to move to Hawaii a long time ago, but when the economy crashed in 2008, didn't work out, so I came back here and I thought, you know, Salt Lake has this huge lake that nobody ever does anything out there. I just thought, you come to Salt Lake City, you got to see the Salt Lake right?
We try to tell people about the lake, just keep them interested. Some good stories, just as you know, there's just so much history about the Great Salt Lake and it’s just such a cool, unique body of water. So it's really fun to tell people about it.
People think it's such a wasteland. You know, it's buggy, it smells, there's no beachfront property or hotels around it. And it is super buggy around the shore, but once you get out on the lake, it's definitely one of the prettier places I've seen. And even guests say that. Just seeing people float in the water. I mean, there's just a handful places in the world where you can actually float in water without sinking and I always jump in with them. I’ve brought friends and family out there on the boat. And then yeah, just the sunsets are second to none, just red and everything.
I mean, if the lake drops another foot, or even two feet, I mean, yeah, we'll definitely be out of business because we won't be able to get out of the marina. I mean, it'll suck. I'll be out of business. But I think the bigger issue is just that lake going down. It's gonna affect millions of migratory birds, the brine shrimp, the ecosystem of the state of Utah. There's just so many things that are just even bigger than me that if this lake goes down, then we're in trouble.
I tell people I would never do boat tours on any other lake. Great Salt Lake, it’s just so unique and so unlike any other lake in the world.
