Lake Powell!!!

 We finally made it back to Lake Powell!!  Last time we were there I was pregnant with Sage, so 11 years ago.  It's about time we went back.  And I'll just start out by saying that it did not disappoint.  In fact, I think I could easily say it was our best Lake Powell trip yet.  We only went twice before, and we had little kids both of those times, so I'm sure having older kids that can take care of themselves helped.  Oh yeah, not being pregnant is also a plus.  

Even though the trip was awesome, as with all Lake Powell trips, it was not without it's problems.  This was our first trip in Bumble Bee.  Jake was nervous to go because it's a small, somewhat shallow boat.  He kept talking about Lake Powell storms and how we would sink in our boat.  One good part of the trip is that we established that we can be in a big storm and not sink.  More on that later.

We went with our good friends the Mackay's.  They're awesome and we always have great fun with them.  We were worried about the low water level due to severe drought conditions.  Once we got on the water it was amazing and we just kept an eye out for rocks.  But I'm not going to lie, getting on the water was stressful and challenging.  It was essentially a beach launch.  Those are never fun.  This may have been our fault as we found out later we went off the wrong ramp.  I'll blame the Mackay's for that one since we followed them.  No worries though, we survived the launch without breaking our boat.  Our camp spot was awesome.  It's just so beautiful there.  And quiet.  And no cell service.  This all adds up for amazing times.  

I guess I should back up to the drive down.  As we were putting the cover on the boat (it may have had some holes in it) Jake commented that it wasn't a travel cover and would probably break in a million pieces on the way down.  I immediately dismissed this as being impossible.  Seemed like a good cover to me.  I mean there were a million straps.  When will I learn that Jake's always right?  Apparently never.  On I-70 I looked back to see most of our cover fly off.  I told Jake to pull over.  He said he couldn't on I-70.  I informed him if he didn't pull over we would lose everything from the boat.  He pulled over and miraculously nothing flew out of the boat.  This is truly a miracle because the front of the boat was full of pillows.  We were able to rearrange things and continue on our way.  I'll give Jake credit.  He didn't even say I told you.  Although I'm sure he had to bite his tongue hard not to.  I figured if that was the only thing that happened on our trip then we would be doing pretty well.  

Our days were spent just relaxing and essentially doing whatever we wanted.  So awesome.  A couple of the mornings started with some slalom skiing, because you can't go to Lake Powell and not water ski.  Jake had to try to get up on his mom's really old, way too small ski.  This was his own fault because I tried really hard to get him to buy a ski before we went knowing that once we got there he would want to ski.  I guess maybe the moral of this story is that neither of us listens to the other.  Ha!  Hopefully some day we'll learn.  Every day we took lunch with us and would go to an awesome cave to eat in the shade.  It felt so good.  We did a lot of surfing and tubing.  Every day we went to the marina for ice cream.  And flushing toilets.  It was so nice to have no list of things to do, no phone, just pure relaxing.

On our last day we were out exploring some of the canyons.  We'd gotten pretty far from our camp.  The canyons are so narrow that you can only see a little piece of sky above you.  All of the sudden we looked behind us and the sky was dark with scary looking clouds.  We immediately packed up and started to head for camp.  The wind was crazy!  It was like being in a pressure washer and sand blaster all at the same time.  The waves were huge.  The Mackay's went in front with their bigger boat to break the waves up for us.  We finally made it back to camp to see all of the tents flattened.  I wish I had taken a picture.  A couple of the Mackay's kids swam to shore to see if they could do anything to save our stuff.  When they were getting back in the boat one of the girls got her foot stuck in the propeller while it was running.  She got a good cut that was bleeding pretty good.  We retreated to a canyon to wait out the storm and fix her foot up.  Fortunately, the cuts weren't too bad and we were able to clean and patch them up.  When the storm finally stopped and we made it back to camp it was like a bomb had gone off.  A couple of the poles on our tent were bent in half.  There was literally a foot of sand inside our tent.  Some good samaritans had come over and put rocks on all of our tents so that they didn't blow away.  So nice of them.  We made the obvious decision to pack up and head out.  A couple of the tents were ruined and there was no way to stay.  Which was super depressing since the weather was now amazing.  By the time we packed everything, trailered the boats, and started to head home it was 9:30 at night.  We didn't get home until almost 3am.  It was one of the longest drives ever.  Jake got us to Price before he passed out and I pulled the boat the rest of the way.  I've never been so tired in my life.  I had to pull on all of my all night nursing powers to make it home.  Gratefully, we all made it home in one piece.

Even with all of the drama at the end we're all excited to go back to Lake Powell next year.  We have a nice new cover that shouldn't break.  And, if we somehow end up in a storm again, we know our boat will make it.  I will say that we're hoping to get a house boat next year.  That sounds pretty amazing to me.

If you made it this far in this super long post then you win.  Pictures will have to come in another post as this is already way too long.  I'll add a couple here just to give you a taste of the beauty of Lake Powell.

Our beautiful camping spot.