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.