Up early this morning and packing the cooler and all of our other gear for a full day out on Lake Powell.
yay for Lake time! :)
We are staying at the Wahweap camping area of Lake Powell which is at the very southern end of this massive lake which has more shoreline than the entire west coast of the US. We made the short 3 minute ride to the marina and were going through the boat checklist for our 19’ powerboat with them by just after 8am. We made it out of the marina and just passed the No Wake zone when I throttled down and immediately the engine overheat alarm came on- surely that can’t be right I thought. We idled down and tried it again- same engine alarm. We hightailed it back to the dock and 40 minutes later we were back out on the water in a different boat (new boat would not be the correct choice of words since this boat looked older than me. However, looks were deceiving and the Grady White and 150 HP Mercruiser served us well all day.) It took us 20-30 minutes to get our bearings in Waheap Bay- meaning we made several false starts down wrong channels and canyons from where we were trying to go before finding the correct one! Our plan was fairly ambitious- we were going to travel over several hours north along the main channel of Lake Powell and first go to Rainbow Bridge, the largest stone arch in the United States.
Rainbow Bridge National Monument
Then we were going to explore as many canyons and coves as time would allow. First a little bit of information about the Lake- likely one of the premier house boating destinations in the world- houseboats of all sizes were out on the lake- everywhere. The next thing we noticed was the amount of chop out on the lake. Substantially more than what we had in mind due to both wind action and large boats. We would not be deterred! We set out for the 50+ mile journey and it was a beautiful lake. We had heard stories from others and were not disappointed. The side canyons and main channel were something totally foreign to us as east coast boaters. It was almost as if we were boating through the same scenery of beautiful mountain peaks we had seen the previous couple of days in Zion NP! After several swim breaks we finally made it to Rainbow Bridge NM dock. We made the very hot and dusty one mile hike in to Rainbow Bridge and stood for a while in the shade marveling at it. The Indians believed it to be a rainbow turned to stone. We made the one mile hike back to the boat and enjoyed a quick lunch under our small Bimini top on the boat. Over the next 4 hours we made our way through numerous canyons between buoy 49 and buoy 29 as well as taking lots of swim stops. Dungeon Canyon was my favorite.
The narrow Dungeon Canyon
It was a tighter canyon and it got really tight- so much so that we had to stop the boat and use a combination of oar power and the boats reverse gear to back our way 100 yards out of the canyon to be able to turn around! By 7pm we were just arriving back at the dock in Wahweap Marina at our slip. We made our way back to the camper slightly sunburned and completely worn out. We will all sleep well tonight and look forward to our second day on the Lake Powell.
Lake Powell in the evening sun.