Lake Powell

Now that we were seasoned boat campers (with one trip to Flaming Gorge under our belt) we decided to go check out Lake Powell with the long weekend Whitney had from school. It was about a 6 hour drive to Bullfrog Marina. Once we got everything packed in the boat and got it launched we only had a few hours left of daylight. We headed about 10 miles down river to the Rincon to set up camp the first night. We found a reasonable spot but could've done without the mud and sticker bushes. The next morning we packed everything up and headed further down river to find a nice sandy camping spot in Cottonwood Canyon.

After setting up camp we headed over to Hole in the Rock which is where some of the Mormon pioneers built a road to bring wagons down to cross the Colorado river on their way to forming a settlement on the San Juan river near the Four Corners area. The Colorado river is surrounded by shear cliffs so there a few places you can cross it with wagons. After hiking to the top and back down it is absolutely amazing to think they brought wagons down that cleft. They spent many days blasting, carving, and building a trail down that cleft. You can see it behind the girls at the bottom of the "V" on the horizon. The other three pictures show evidence of where they blasted and carved the trail out of the rock. In some places they drilled holes down in the rock where wooden poles where placed to help build more support for the road.

We enjoyed the afternoon spent tubing, wakeboarding, waterskiing, and exploring other side canyons. Jim was finally able to get up on one ski. The next morning we headed further down river to Rainbow Bridge National Monument with some exploration of some narrow side canyons coming and going.

The Rainbow Bridge is stunning to behold! It stands 290 feet high and has a span of 234 feet and is one of the largest natural bridges in the world. The ranger also showed us a dinosaur track believed to be from a dilophosaurus in the rock.

We stopped at Dangling Rope Marina for a few gallons of gas and some ice cream and then headed back to our campsite. We enjoyed a beautiful view up Cottonwood Canyon from our site but you better watch out because when the sun goes down the Wild Things come out to dance!

The next morning we packed up and headed back to Bullfrog. The water was nice and smooth so I enjoyed a wakeboard ride for a few miles as we headed back up river. A great way to cap a fun weekend spent camping, boating, and hiking. We figured we did over 150 miles in our boat that weekend!