Lake Powell - Day 2

Ever since I read a travel magazine one day about how great Lake Powell was I thought that that would be the ultimate vacation.  Rent a house boat and jet ski and just spend a week on the water and beaching the boat in various canyons.  Well lots of people think that so I am glad we got here after most people have ended their vacations and in the middle of the week.  We rented a small motor boat with a 135 horse power engine (about 4 times as many horses as fit in the VW engine) and cruised around the lake for the day.  We didn't even get burned even though it was sunny all day thanks to me putting too much sun screen on both of us.

 

    
I am driving the boat out of the marina on the right and Jen is standing in front of the famous Rainbow Arch.  It is the largest stone arch in the world.  It is over 200 feet high and wide.  They don't let you drive your boat up underneath like in the travel magazines anymore but it was still really cool to see.

    
There were tons of carp and stripes near the marina's because everyone feeds the fish.  The larger fish in this picture are close to 2 feet in length.  Jen spent about an hour and a half on the dock because she got a little sea sick and needed time to recover.  I used that time to drive the boat too fast over large wakes and do a little cliff jumping and swimming.

    
In each of  the pictures above there is an airplane if you look closely.  This is just to give you an idea of how immense the canyon walls were in Lake Powell.  One of the neat things was that you could go back and explore the different smaller canyons and beach the boat and get out and walk, eat, swim, etc.
    
In the picture on the right I am jumping off of a 15-20 foot cliff into water so deep that Jen was afraid to swim in it.  So when we went swimming together we stuck to water that was a little more shallow.  I know what she is feeling though.  Do you ever get the feeling when you are in really deep, dark waters that just maybe the Lockness Monster's cousin may be living there?  Anyway we didn't see anything larger than really big carp so I felt pretty safe.  It was fun to go cliff jumping for the first time in years.  I even landed this flip.  Sometimes when I try to do a flip while cliff jumping I don't get the rotation right and land on my stomach or back.  Ooh, that smarts.

    
Here is a picture of the back of the boat and me on the other side of the arch.  Just kidding.  It is an Indian holy ground so you are asked not to walk through it.  All in all it was a great day.  I would highly recommend Lake Powell for a family vacation.  Who knows maybe we'll go back someday.
 

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