Taking Notes
What We Did On Our Summer Vacation 07.09 • written by Mike G.
Every year as the summer comes to an end I usually pack things up and head up to the woods and lakes that make up northern Wisconsin. It’s been a family tradition for 6 decades and I thought I’d be tossing cheetos off the dock for the 4” bluegill until I was 75. However, this year lysterrmint and myself traded in our log cabin for a houseboat, the forest for the desert, and joined our friends Jason and Melanie (along with another 20 family members and friends of the family) on their annual trip to Lake Powell, Utah. Having spent most of my life east of the Mississippi River, I had no idea what to expect, but the photos posted to Lake Powell’s wikipedia page had me quite excited.
We flew out last Wednesday, and flew into Vegas, a pretty uneventful flight save for the last 20 minutes that bumped us around harder than a new ride at Six Flags. We eventually landed safely, after pulling off and re-circling around for a second attempt, walked through the “just as gaudy as Times Square but wholly unimpressive” advertising blitz that was the baggage claim, got our bags, waded through 100+ degree desert heat and met Melanie’s dad for a cruise down the strip and the ride out to his place to refuel before the 3 and a half hour ride out to Lake Powell the next morning.
For the most part, the ride out to Lake Powell was pretty uneventful, a steady stream of red-sand, beautiful mountains and winding road as far as the eye could see. However, I say for the most part due to our detour just a bit out of the way to take a trip through Zion National park.
We pulled over on one of the extremely windy roads that crawled up the mountain. The drop off to the right was just as steep as the cliff to the left.
I snuck a photo of Lysterrmint while she was shooting a memory card full of red rock cliffs.
The park is a series of winding roads and canyons with mountain peaks that tower over even the most impressive skyscrapers that Manhattan has to offer. We went straight through the park, seeing only a small percentage of it as we had to pick up our boat at a pre-determined time, but were sure to get a week long pass to the park so we could spend more time there on the way back.
The second half of the drive was pretty similar to the first, with only one stop along the way to rest our legs and stretch out a bit.
In Utah they have Mutant Dandelions as big as a fist.
They also have sunflowers.
Then, out of nowhere the desert turned to water and we had arrived at the lake. Lake Powell is actually a branch of the Colorado River that spilled over and filled in the nearby canyons when the Glen Canyon Dam was constructed.
This is the bridge over the dam. It looked as if it was made of tinker toys as we approached it and I began to hyperventilate a bit as we drove over it.
The top of the dam.
The bottom of the dam.
The Marina was just a short 5 minute trip from the dam, so we quickly made our way there and claimed our boat. Due to the sheer amount of people that came along on the trip this year, there were two boats. We assumed it’d be split up evenly, but somehow our boat, a three-bedroom two-and-a-half-story floating condo, only had Lysterrmint and myself, along with Jason, Melanie and their friend Matt on it while the other boat was home to the other 20 people on the trip. This turn of events resulted in the addition of the word thrillty to the English language. Go spread it far and wide.
This is Fred. He met us at the marina.
When all the bags and groceries were packed onto the boat, we backed it away from the dock and proceeded up the lake to meet the second boat and make our way to the landing area. It was a bit of an Abbott & Costello like experience, but we eventually made it there, dug in our anchors and could finally relax for a few days.
At the marina they told us to aim the boat for this rock, then, when we got close, go right and float around it.
This damn plateau was all that stood between us and our cell phone tower, keeping us from regularly checking our e-mail and me from being able to work on a few projects with tight deadlines.
See where the color of the rock changes? That’s how high the lake used to be.
That’s where I lived for a few days.
The view from the front of the boat. About halfway between the higher up bushline and the shoreline is where we had our encounter with a rattlesnake after dinner on the first night.
This is a model of the lake that can be found at the dam’s visitor center. The blue arrow is the damn. The marina was fairly near that. The yellow arrow is where we docked the boat. A trip on the houseboat from one to the other would be about 3 hours.
On the first full day we were on the lake the highlight was surely the trip to the cliffs. It was nice to just ride around the lake in the boat, getting a feeling for the size and landscape. Everything looked like a movie set, but far more enormous. As we cut into one of the bays we saw a set of cliffs that looked pretty big, but not nearly as big as they actually were. While I stayed in the boat due to my lack of swimsuit, Lysterrmint, Jason, Mel and Matt all swam over to them.
Matt jumped first. Jason and Mel followed shortly thereafter. Matt jumped a few more times as well.
Lysterrmint just enjoyed laying out on the warm rock with her legs in the water.
On another trip out in the boat, a group of us went out and made our way up to the end of one of the small and windy canyons. Half the boat wanted to take a hike up a fairly leisurely trail while the rest of the boat hung back a bit in the canyon and swum around the boat. For most of the ride the river was about 20-25 feet deep, but as we came around that last turn, things quickly shallowed up, with the river only about 4 feet deep up until the end.
The entrance to the narrows. Probably about 30 feet across here.
A dead tree in the river bed. The river was about 18 feet deep at this part.
Another narrow part of the canyon just before a fork in the river.
On their hike they came across a 30-foot tall mudslide. If you look closely you can see Jason at the top of the mound.
Really, most of the rest of the trip was extremely relaxed, just laying around the boat, swimming out in the water, riding around on the motor boat, getting yanked around the river on the tubes and just decompressing from the craziness that all of us experience in our day to day lives. On the 4th a group of people took a trip out to Rainbow Bridge (unfortunately Lysterrmint and I stayed behind because the weather was getting nasty), and while there were no major fireworks displays that night, most every boat on the lake was doing their best to blow up a little piece of this country in celebration of it’s birth.
One of the 7 natural wonders of the world.
Hopefully one of these explosions took out one of the bats, because those damn things scared the crap out of me.
As quickly as it began, our final day there came to an end. It was time to dig out the anchors, steer the boat back to the dock and make our way back to St. George, get a few hours of sleep and hop on a plane for the flight home. Our trip back to the house took quite a while as we took our time and swung back through Zion National Park, taking one of the guide buses deep into the valley and walking out to the river that runs through it.
Just a small portion of Fred’s family that met us as we returned to the marina.
The peak at Angel’s Pass in Zion. There are portions of that slope to the right that are 28” across at the top. You walk across that to get to the peak. Those people are nuts.
We all waded out in the river a top a very shallow waterfall. The water was freezing, but felt so nice. There were about 15 kids playing in the water and having the time of their life.
And you can see a few of the children in the background behind Lysterrmint. Many more are waist deep in the water off the right of the photo.
If we become friends, you’ll hear me complain about nature quite a bit. I’m definitely a city boy, through and through. I view most critters as tiny things that can and will kill me if given the chance. My ankles are pretty shot from years of skateboarding in my school days. I like beds and fresh coffee in the morning. I don’t enjoy catching my food and the silence and darkness at night makes it near impossible for me to fall asleep. However, don’t for a second fool yourself into thinking that I don’t appreciate what’s out there. The sheer scope of the landscape and the beauty it contains, the clear view of the nighttime sky, the fresh air, and the clear water all add up to memories that are going to stick with me for the rest of my life.