My youngest son and nephew are both 12 so I let them take my Yamame rod. My oldest son has his own tenkara rod, an 11′ Iwana. He left his furled line at home in MA so I let him try one of the level fluoro lines that my new tenkara friend Chris sent me. They are bright pink and easy to see. He headed down the shore for some privacy.

With the 2 twelve year olds ready to go, I had to teach them to cast in to a slight head wind. Both boys were casting like champs in a few tries. They were both catching perch and bluegills in a matter of minutes. Perch on a light tenkara rod are particularly fun!

When the boys went off to swim, I took rod in hand and chased after some bass I saw a little further offshore. The water was warm so I wet waded past my knees and was able to reach the structure where the fish were hiding. I cast a size 12 black fly – the kind I wrote about a few weeks ago – and hooked a small striped bass within a few minutes. I’ve only fished for stripers on the ocean so this was a treat.

On Tuesday, the rain was really coming down so we decided to drive to Freeport to do some back-to-school shopping and to visit the LL Bean store(s).

On Wednesday, we decided to do some rock and mineral collecting. We took a short drive to Mount Apatite and hiked up to the abandoned quarry. The dirt road leading from the National Guard Armory has several large and intimidating signs saying to KEEP OUT. However, it is perfectly legal to hike, bike and collect minerals here. Shortly after the last No Trespassing sign is a sign that says to stay on the trails, be careful of falling rocks, and no swimming in the quarries.

The hike is about 1/2 mile uphill on the main “road”. Not too strenuous. There are several quarry pits and tailings areas. We went past the pits and summited Mount Apatite in another 1/2 mile. Not much to see through the dense forest. We broke out the hand shovels, hammers and chisels (and safety glasses and gloves of course) and started exploring. We collected a number of garnets – nothing fantastic but fun nevertheless. We also found some nicely formed but small black Tourmaline crystals. There was lots of mica around too.

After a few hours we decided to visit Perham’s Rock Shop in West Paris. They have quite a nice museum of specimens from the local area as well as jewelry and minerals for sale. The also own 3 quarries in neighboring Greenwood that they allow collectors to visit for free – and they even hand out directions and information sheets. We decided to visit the Waisanen Quarry for a few hours. We found lots more black Tourmaline, smokey quartz and some yet to be identified minerals.

The next day, the boys wanted to go back to the Harvard Quarry, another one of Perham’s locations and an important historical quarry. The pegmatite at Harvard was amazing, huge crystals of quartz, black Tourmaline, garnets and other minerals intertwined. I’ll post photos of some of our finds later but we had a lot of fun and found a few keepers.

Friday was a relaxing morning and then the drive home. We stopped in Kittery to do some more back to school shopping.

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.