Lindsay & her boys visit

Jamie was going to be out of town for a week so Lindsay brought Connor & Austin to Tega Cay for a visit.

Separation anxiety

We're in S.A. We've decided to leave the MP here for a few weeks. We've got Grand Parent duties plus a few other pressing issues that require our presence in Tega Cay. We will be flying out tomorrow. The MP is parked in the CFG warehouse parking lot. I am bummed that I will have to start mowing my own grass again.

Seen at New Mexico rest area

Lake Powell days 7-9

We covered a bunch of miles these last 3 days. The charted miles follow the old course of the river. The channel is marked real well with buoys, each numbered. There are wide bays that cover the meandering river channel. Shortcuts were in order. It was somewhat confusing because we could do some channels that no one else could do. We even had to get out of the boats once and drag them through 3 inch deep water. Anyway we saved I'm guess'n 5 miles off of the charted distance. Also the dam is mile 0 and we weren't going to the dam. We were going to the state line marina, 5 miles short of the dam. This is blog worthy because we finished today (day 9). Some highlights of the last three days: We had another thunder/wind/sand storm. I had to go swimming to retrieve some of our stuff. Jenny lost a screw the helps hold her rudder in place leaving a 3/8 inch hole in the side of her boat. She took on water for 2 days before I figured out what was up. We changed our watches to Utah time because we were in Utah. We found out the entire lake stays on Arizona time when we hit dangling rope marina an hour before it opened. The trip is over. We were glad to see Wahweap marina. We drove the MP into Page and picked up the car that was parked in Vaughn's Uncle's driveway. Laundry tomorrow then we're headed east. We started this trip on July 3rd. We're pretty much done.

Labor Day on Lake Powell

Watch "Lunch on the lake" on YouTube

Lake Powell days 5 & 6

This weekend is labor day weekend. The lake is really crowded. Boats everywhere. We are a little worried about finding a camping spot that's unoccupied but our requirements are different than everyone else. Tonight our boats are sitting on a rock ledge and the tent is pitched on a spit of sand a short walk from the water. That wouldn't work for a powerboat. We have seen no other Kayakers. The last 2 afternoons we have had horrific wind storms. Jenny was in the tent both times as the tent filled with sand. To put it mildly she was extremely unhappy. Today, day 5, we were forced to paddle 3 extra miles because there were vertical cliffs on both sides of the lake for several miles. We stopped at the first available spot. 18 miles. That puts us a little ahead. Today day 6, the crowds have thinned some. We had a strong head wind today that slowed us considerably. We made our 15 miles. We are 57 miles from the dam at the mouth of the San Juan river.

Lake Powell day 3 & 4

We've decided a 6am getup will get us on the water by 8. It takes us 6 hours to do 15 miles which puts us in camp early enough to beat out the camping power boaters. We couldn't see any good place to stop in the main channel so we gambled and paddled up a side canyon hoping to find a place. We're in Hanson Creek canyon. Tomorrow we paddle by Hall's crossing marina.........passing through halls crossing now. Wifi available. Here's a couple posts.

Lake powell day 1 & 2

The shuttle worked well. Vaughn was on time. The drive took a little over 4 hours. It took us awhile to rig and load the boats. We were kind of tired to begin with plus we lost an hour entering Utah so we only did 4 miles the first day. We informally decided 15 miles a day would be enough. We started looking for a campable spot at 15 miles and ended up on a beach. We had a horrific wind storm late afternoon while I was making a breakfast bread. There was some. Blowing Sand that got in the batter. It made for a crunchy breakfast.