Lake Powell Part 10 of 10

Update: We found some pictures of our last Lake Powell adventure, which I'm adding to the blog on June 21, 2017 - Summer Solstice.

LAKE POWELL

October 4 – 7, 2004

DeRay, Jeanette, and Ed Hugh

Lynn and Juanita Esplin

When DeRay, Ed, and I got all packed in the van at 5:50 AM on Monday October 4, the van wouldn’t start.  Is this a bad omen?  Fortunately, we had Mr. Can-Fix-Anything along, and he had us on our way in about 15 minutes.  We arrived at Nephi at 7:15, not much later than we planned.  Lynn and Juanita didn’t have to coax very hard to get us to come in for breakfast.  Even leaving Nephi after 8, we were at Bullfrog before 1 PM.  Is this going to be our new best way to come?

After lunch in the slip, we were sailing away by 3 PM.

We always have to look for the rock we got stuck on that night with Shirley and Charles.  I always have to take a picture of it, and then when I look at my pictures, I can’t remember why I took it or why it’s significant.  It’s out of the water 50-80 feet now.  It was submerged when we hit it.

You can see how high the rock is and the high water mark so it would just barely have been submerged when we hit it and spent the night on it in 1986. What doesn't show in the picture is that there is water on the other side of the forefront rock making it a little island.

The rock we got stuck on in 2001

Calm.  Lovely.  We forget until we come again how incredible the scenery is.  Imposing.  Magnificent.  In living color.  Ed wanted to show Uncle Lynn and Aunt Juanita how he could drive the boat.  But he didn’t want to drive again on the whole trip.  “I don’t have to do it every day,” he explains.  I guess he figured he had impressed them duly.  No need to overdo.

Lynn, Ed driving, DeRay

We anchored in our usual cove by the hanging garden, except this year we are far from the hanging gardens and almost out in the channel because the water is so low.  Last year we took a picture of me in the water hanging onto the bottom branches of a tree.  This year the tree is totally out of the water. 

Jeanette by tree that she hung from lower branches last year.

This is home to us; our home on the lake.  We’ve been here for the past four or five years or more.

I never remember anyone doing anchors as readily as Lynn.  Even when Brooke came with his strong high school buddies, before and after their missions, they were never eager to do anchors.  Sometimes we'd yell at them to GET THE ANCHORS but sometimes it was just easier to do it ourselves.  I don't know why everyone hates to do anchors so much—except that they’re heavy, awkward, and the rocks are sharp, steep, and treacherous.  It was pleasant having a willing hand on board--especially someone with a GPS!  Until his batteries went dead, he kept us well informed as to our whereabouts.  Now DeRay wants one.

Lynn scouting

Lynn & Juanita charcoal broiled homegrown steaks for dinner.  They are so delicious; so much better than anything at Albertsons.  Baked potatoes—veggies—tomatoes.  BIRTHDAY CAKE complete with candle and decorations.

That’s the second time I’ve blown out a candle for my 68th birthday.  Brooke and Elizabeth had a candle on the lemon squares, which weren’t lemon this year but lime, after my birthday dinner at their house last night.  Elizabeth knows how much we love her lemon ‘er I mean lime squares!  What’s this with one candle?  Are they insinuating that I am so old that one candle is used to symbolize 68?   Probably.

Ed thinking

Lynn wanted to go to bed at 9; Ed wanted to go to bed at 11.  We settled in at 10:30 after moving everyone around because it was sprinkling.  DeRay blew up our air mattress and we set up on the top deck before dark.  We generously offered Lynn and Juanita the bed inside and talked Ed into sleeping on the table bed.  “It’s just as close to the bathroom.”  “You can do it.”  He hates change.  He eventually converted.  For us to move back inside, we have to move Lynn and Juanita from the bed, because it’s the only place DeRay can plug in his breathing machine; then we have to reconvert Ed to the back bedroom, on the bed next to us.  He snores.  He says he doesn’t snore.  He snores.  We didn’t want him keeping Lynn and Juanita awake.  So they pulled out the couch and settled in.

From  10:30 to 11:30, there was the most violent, spectacular electrical storm I have ever seen.  There wasn’t a moment when the sky wasn’t lit up.  Right smack over us.  Zigzag lightning bursts shooting straight for the boat.  Lynn tightened the ropes.  He was afraid the anchors wouldn’t hold.  And one almost didn’t.  It moved the rock the anchor was around and it could have tumbled into the lake. 

I don’t know about the others, but I lay there in abject fear.  The strong relentless winds are terrifying.  Remember, we are not on solid ground.  It is such a helpless feeling, like there is nothing we can do but be at the mercy of the elements.  Ed never complains.  I sometimes think that he actually enjoys it.  He has such trust.  The next day he tells me, “I forgot to mention, Mom, you can’t control Mother Nature.”  It’s his philosophy and he capitulates completely. 

Tuesday morning it was calm and beautiful.  Innocent.  Sure.  After our fright night!.  Steak & eggs for breakfast.  Are we back on the Princess Cruise? We pulled up anchors around 9.  By 1 PM, total cloud cover.  After our experience last night, we’re a little gun shy so we pull into a cove across from Hole in the Rock and as close to Cottonwood Canyon as we can park.  Cottonwood Canyon is shallow and debris laden, unnavigable.  Lynn & I go scouting for an outlet, a connection to the pioneer trail up Cottonwood but there is none.  We read and nap; play Zonk & Yahtzee; enjoying Eggplant Parmesan for lunch, except I forgot the Parmesan so it was eggplant and another kind of cheese.

For dinner we had ham and rice, baked squash, and grape/broccoli salad.  DeRay blew the air mattress up while we were visiting around the table.  What do we hear?  Pitter-patter.  No stars.  Lightning.  By the time, DeRay & Lynn got topside, a gust of wind had blown the sleeping bag on the rail. 

So once again, we move everything back downstairs.  Once again, everyone settles in.  I do not relish another night of fright.  I asked Juanita if she were scared:  “No, I just know Lynn will take care of me.”  Imagine having that kind of trust.  When Ed says you can’t control Mother Nature, I believe that means Lynn and DeRay also.  So I’m prepared to be scared.

By the time, DeRay quits reading around 11, the stars are bright so he blows the air mattress up again and we move topside.  It’s worth it.  The sky is spectacular!  We never want to close our eyes, it is so exposed and expansive.  Twinkle, twinkle brilliant stars; how I wonder what you are. .   
Wednesday morning, we didn’t lollygag.  We were off by 7:30 AM.  It’s Rainbow Bridge or Bust!  Have we forgotten how narrow these channels are?  How do the big tour boats make it?  We’re encircled.  Will we get stuck?  Solid cliffs surrounding us.  It doesn’t even look like there is an opening, fore or aft.  We are swallowed up in the belly of the canyon.

DeRay’s expertise maneuvers us safely in around 11 AM.  Ed couldn’t hike, of course (he hurt his knee in St. George.  We brought him to the boat in a wheelchair.), but the rest of us made it the mile and one-fourth to the Rainbow Bridge.  One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

 Juanita, Lynn & DeRay hiking to Rainbow Bridge

 Lynn & Juanita

 Jeanette & DeRay

 Jeanette

Lynn

I love the desert flowers. Open at night; close during day.

  With the German journalists who arrived at the same time, Lynn and I break the rules and go to the other side of the arch.  They all climbed around it so they wouldn’t walk in its shadow and have evil cast over them.  “Rainbow Bridge is sacred to Native American nations.  We request your voluntary cooperation in not approaching or walking under Rainbow Bridge.”  Like Steve Ward, the guide who brought the German Journalists, I believe you are blessed when you sit under the shadow of the bridge.  Actually, the shadow was to the west of the bridge so they had to walk in the shadow to climb up and over.  By the time I walked under the bridge, I was in the sun, out of the shadow.  Steve says he thinks the Government uses the Indians as an excuse to keep people away from the fragile landscape.  Over time, the same forces that shaped Rainbow Bridge will also dismantle it.

Once or twice, we swam under it.  The year Brooke graduated from high school, we ate our lunch in the cool shadow of the arch.  There were no restrictions in those days.

RAINBOW BRIDGE

The World’s Largest Natural Bridge

  From its base to the top of the arch, it is 290 feet—nearly the height of the Statue of Liberty—and spans 275 feet across the river; the top of the arch is 42 feet thick and 33 feet wide.  The guide has been on top of it 31 times.  Of course, he can’t do it anymore.  Lynn and I will be in some publication in Germany.  I had on a red shirt and Lynn had on a white cowboy hat.  They said they loved having us in their pictures to give them dimension.  For one shot, he said, “Move two yards forward and look up.”  I hope my back didn’t look too fat.  One of the German journalists was from Ashchaffenburg (where DeRay was in the service) and one was from Munich.  They were so much fun to visit with.

One of them had been on a Caribbean Cruise “and I didn’t gain an ounce,” he gloats.  “Boy, we did.  We ate everything in sight because we paid so much money.”  “I got a bargain price so I didn’t have to eat so much,” he beamed.

“Is it still there?” this Ranger joked when I was returning from Rainbow Bridge and he and his wife were ascending.

“What?” I asked innocently, playing along with his charade.

“That big rock thing,” he made a motion like an arch.

“I don’t know.  I forgot to look up!” 

       Jeanette, Lynn, Juanita, DeRay

Lynn, Juanita & DeRay hiking back.

Ed waiting

We left around 1.  For lunch, we had salad over ham-fried rice, tomato sandwiches, of course.  Lovely ride back to our favorite cove.  On the way we stopped in the T-Cave, Steve Ward told us about.  He said we couldn’t get our houseboat in it, but we did.  It would have been under water last year.  The lake is down 130 feet from its high water mark.  He said it used to be called Triangle Cave because it is an upside triangle.

Steve is president of Friends for Lake Powell, we found out when we asked him if he would take our picture and I had the audacity to ask him if he was an advocate of draining Lake Powell.  He has lived in Page all his 38 years.  We knew some of the same people, like Ronnie Lamb.  We told him Page wasn’t even there when we grew up in this country.
I spent a couple of hours looking for my camera when we got back.  I couldn’t imagine both the camera and case missing.  I never take the case off my neck.  After searching every nook and cranny all afternoon, I finally remembered that I took it off to do sun salutations while waiting for Lynn, Juanita, and DeRay to get back from Rainbow Bridge.  I had hurried back because we had left Ed alone.  He claimed he really enjoyed having the boat to himself.  I guess I left it there on the bench at the walkway after we had visited with this woman from Delaware who had been to Rainbow Bridge three years ago. 

“What?  You’re from Delaware and you’ve been here twice?  Lynn and Juanita have lived here all their lives and this is their first trip.”  

I am just sick about leaving my camera--my first digital camera.  Sick all day and sick all night.  How can losing a camera with great Lake Powell shots make me feel so worthless, incapable, insecure and to hate myself? 

In desperation, when I was questioning Ed about my camera, he said, “You should have thought about that before you left Rainbow Bridge.”  Sounds to me like he knew that I had left my camera setting on the bench.  Why doesn’t he say something?  I told all of them that they could have been heroes if they had noticed that I left it.  Losing it is too much to bear. 

Delicious Dutch Oven dinner cooked in the oven.  Amy couldn’t believe we would go to Lake Powell and cook our Dutch oven inside.  “We didn’t want to carry a heavy Dutch oven and briquettes and lighter fluid down to the boat.  We’re old and tired.”  We also had a tossed Green Salad and the left over grape salad. 

After dinner, DeRay read.  Ed thought.  Lynn, Juanita, and I played Boggle and Zonk.  I lost.  It wasn’t my day. 

Lights out at 10:45.  DeRay & I slept topside under the brilliant stars and Milky Way.  Living under glaring city lights, one can forget there is a Milky Way.

 On Thursday, it was beautiful, but a little breezy--just enough to put a small fear in our hearts because we’re not really sailors.  Lynn is out testing the solid ground.  Taking pictures.  Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo.  I’ve done a little Yoga.  In four days, my exercise has been the two miles walk to Rainbow Bridge.  It’s been warm enough to swim.  I’ve just been too lazy. 

We went to Halls to dump and fill and get gas because Steve Ward said he thought Bullfrog was going to be closed.  We got gas OK (and Bullfrog was closed) but their dump and fill didn’t work.  DeRay spent the next two hours looking for the one in Bullfrog.  He couldn’t even find anyone to ask.  With the water lowering, everything keeps changing.  By now it’s after 2, and the toilet doesn’t work.  After working on it for two hours, DeRay decides he has to take the boat back to the dump and fill to flush out the line.  At least he knows where it is now.  On the way, he hits another boat.  I thought we would spend the rest of the daylight hours filling our insurance papers and such, but DeRay didn’t think either boat was damaged and he was as ready to get on our way as were the rest of us. 

Eventually, he got the toilet unclogged but it leaks so the next guy will have to tighten it.  DeRay doesn’t have the tools.

We finished reading aloud Charlotte’s Rose.  It was a book by A. E. Cannon (LaVell Edwards daughter) that Juanita loaned us.  John gave it to her and she loved it.  She has read it twice and listened to most of it again.

Lynn took three loads up and I took one.  Juanita did the dishes and helped.

Juanita doing dishes; Ed thinking in bedroom

This long “getting off” has been frustrating.  We left at 5; eating peanut butter sandwiches along the way, apples, carrots, chips, candy.  We arrived in Nephi at 9; home at 11 on the dot. 

Eddy can't quit bragging about what a good time he had.

After we got home, DeRay was watching a special on KUED on the Glen Canyon Dam - more shoreline than the whole western coast - over 1900 miles - and there was Steve Ward, the guy who was showing those two German journalists around.  So now we're famous by association!

I’m in mourning, more from brain loss than the camera, which, as Amy pointed out, can be replaced.

Princess Cruises called at 8:31 Tuesday morning, October 12, to say that the Park Service had called them regarding a lost camera.  It seems the only identification I had in the camera case were mine and Ed’s Princess cards—the ones we used to get on and off the ship, to enter the dining rooms, and to purchase anything on board.  We called Celeste at the Park Service in Page and she's going to put it in the mail today.  It was turned in at Dangling Rope.  I wonder if the Ranger who wondered if Rainbow Bridge were still there, is the one who turned it in.  I am so thrilled.  I had filed a lost item report.  Who knows why it wasn't connected to the camera.  Celeste has been out of the office.  Maybe she's the only one with brains.  But who am I to talk?  See.  There are honest people left in the world!  I'm happy!

BTW, what if the Ranger had been 15 minutes earlier?  Would we have been given us a ticket for trespassing on forbidden property?  One year Brent and Jan went on a walk through the arch.  There is a nice trail and even some historical markers.

I hope my pictures are good after all this.  “Ed, if you had just mentioned to me that I had left my camera setting on the bench, we could have avoided all this trouble.”  “You should have thought of that before you left Rainbow Bridge!”  He sticks to his guns. 

One morning I woke Ed up because it was time to shower and go to the gym.  “You’re as bad as your brother,” he scolded.  Lynn was always up early on the houseboat.

 My camera came today, on Mama’s birthday (October 16), in a very official “priority mail” rather big box.  $6.05 postage.  “Hello Dear Camera!  I thought I’d never see you again, you old friend you.”  I spent the next two hours unloading the pictures and looking at them five times.  None of them are very good.  I’m no photographer.  There seems to be spots on the lens, probably because I took pictures into the sun, but I DON’T CARE, its back home again!  Ed still maintains, “You should have thought of that before you left

Rainbow Bridge!”  The last few pictures are of him on the spot where I left the camera.

Note my camera case on the bench.

Ed

We left on September 3, to drive to Seattle.

Returned home on September 13.

Left for Snowbird on September 18.

Returned home on September 25.

Left on September 27 for St. George.

Returned home on September 30.

Left on October 4, for Lake Powell.

Returned on October 7.

From September 3 to October 7, we have been home 8 days and gone 26 days.

The cruise to Alaska was luxurious; rich foods, lush pools, exotic scenery, opulent. 

Snowbird in autumn in the high mountain splendor is exhilarating.

The desert of St. George grabs you with its quiet formations and swimming pool within walking distance.

Lake Powell has it all.  It’s restorative.  I don’t know if it’s the good company, the cosmos-- sleeping out under the stars is so expansive; or if it’s the creation of the majestic canyons that pulls it all together; body, mind, and spirit; in healing, helpful, discerning ways.  I can’t even explain it.  I just know I have been renewed.

We didn’t know it at the time, but this was to be our very last trip to Lake Powell. The Swan Song.

After all the fussabaloo over my camera, I can’t find any of the pictures 13 years later. Computers come and go.