EclecticGuy

Monday, August 13 to Friday, August 24, 2007

See the photo album here.

We left for Phoenix with Opa early Monday from Manchester, NH via Chicago Midway. The trip was uneventful – except that Chris Daughtry was on our flight in to Phoenix! Elizabeth got autographs for herself and Nick and John. We picked up our van to start the drive north to Page, AZ to start our vacation with 4 days of houseboating on Lake Powell. The temperature got up to 117 degrees at one point! The drive was a good introduction to the Southwest.

Cactus lined both sides of the highway…
and buttes…

and mesas framed the horizon…

In Page, I drove to the Wahweap Marina to complete the paperwork for our houseboat rental and then took care of the grocery shopping. The kids swam in the hotel pool.

The next morning, Eileen and I checked in and got our houseboat training. A jack rabbit met us at the marina parking lot. The sun was just coming up when we arrived.

Here was our houseboat – a 46 footer. It had a great upper deck with a water slide dropping 5 feet to the water!

Nick was armed with my Canon D60 and took a about a 1000 photos during the trip! (I am not kidding) He took this great photo of a duck swimming around the marina.

Once we loaded all of our gear and food, we were ready to cruise.
The scenery was spectacular. The water levels were pretty low this year but still very navigable. There were amazing buttes and rock formations around every bend.
I did most of the driving while everyone relaxed, took pictures, ate, drank and took in the sights.

Navigating lake Powell is not too difficult because there are green and red bouys with mile markers. Green are odd numbered, red even. These bouys also mark the safe passage – keep the red bouys on the right and green on the left when heading away from the dam,
John and Elizabeth were my 2 primary co-pilots. Both were quite good drivers!
For breaks and lunch, we would just beach the boat, anchor it, and check out the sights.

The colors of the sky, rock and water were amazing.
Here is Elizabeth going down the slide.

We brought an inflatable raft for fishing and exploring.
This is my favorite landscape photo from the trip. Nick took this one!
We had a major storm come through on our first night on the boat. I set up the camera on a tripod with a timed exposure to catch this flash of lightning.
Nick driving while I check the map for a good lunch location.
John really likes to get in to his fishing!
Bill relaxing and reading while we cruised to Rainbow Bridge.The entrance to Rainbow Bridge is a very narrow canyon! The kids did not think I could navigate a 46 foot boat through it and kept begging me to turn back!

We finally navigated the canyon without getting stuck and tied the boat off at the National Park dock. The hike up to the arch was about a mile.

Rainbow Bridge is the largest natural arch in the world. The photo does not do it justice.
Elizabeth drove us out of the canyon! She did a great job.