Lake Powell

This year we spent five days over the Memorial Day weekend enjoying time at Lake Powell. This time we headed upriver from Bullfrog marina to check out the canyons and sights up that direction. It was getting into the evening hours by the time we got the boat on the water the first day and diagnosed the problem we had with the boat not running right. (You should listen closely when they tell you what needs to be done when putting the boat back in the water after winterizing like remove the tape from around the air filter.) We started searching for a campsite before it got dark but with the holiday weekend there wasn't much to choose from. We finally found what we thought was going to be a nice sandy site in Forgotten Canyon with a perfect place for the kids to play in the water. We got camp set up and made a quick dinner before heading to bed. Unfortunately the wind picked up later that evening and was blowing the fine sand up under our full rain cover on the tent and through the mesh. We had sand raining down on us all night long. The next morning everything was covered with sand with a six inch sand dune in one corner of the tent. We decided we had enough and decided to brave the really choppy waters in the main channel that day to find a new campsite in a different canyon. We found a great site in Knowles Canyon that served us well the rest of our trip.



That day after setting up camp again we just hung around and relaxed as the high winds made being on the water not very enjoyable. Jim and Whitney did some exploring in the canyon and pulled out the fishing poles catching a large catfish just before dinner. We cooked the fish in the fire to have with the rest of our dinner. The next day we headed to explore Smith Fork. The kids had fun scrambling up and down the slickrock as we made our way up the stream. We checked out a cool grotto and a few narrows but the bushwacking was making it difficult to get higher up the canyon. We saw quite a few lizards and frogs along our hike. We headed down to Bullfrog to get more ice for the cooler and ice cream bars and then stopped in Forgotten Canyon on the way back to our campsite and hiked to the Defiance house ruins. The Defiance house ruins are some Anasazi ruins estimated to be from the 1200's that have been semi-restored and your allowed to enter. The kids enjoyed exploring all the cool little buildings. To get an idea of how big these petroglyphs are you can actually see them in the picture of Jim with the kids just left of the shade line on the wall.



We did a little bit of wakeboarding that evening before down since the water had calmed down. The next morning dawned bright and clear with glassy water beckoning us so we threw a few bites at the kids to keep them satisfied while we each took a few runs on the wakeboard. We had some breakfast then headed out to do some exploring. We explored many of the canyons nearby and stopped in Sevenmile canyon to do some hiking. We hike about 1.5 hours up the canyon traversing the stream most of the way. The first picture shows just how huge and sheer these walls are. You can barely make the family out in the bottom left corner. This one also had some cool subway-like formations.



The kids again enjoyed looking for frogs and lizards. Here is a picture one of the lizards we saw this day. We think it is a desert spiny lizard.



We also saw some river lobsters and lots of tadpoles so we had a lesson on how tadpoles grow into frogs. We had to have some learning experiences since they were skipping school that day :) After our hike we enjoyed lunch in the boat and the kids napped and we headed further up river to Good Hope Bay and Castle Butte.



We enjoyed more wakeboarding and riding of the double dog on the way back to camp in the glassy waters. There's something to being there in the middle of the week instead of over a holiday weekend.



We had dinner next to the campfire that night and Jim caught a large mouth bass that he cleaned up and we brought home to cook.



The next morning we got back out of the water to play for awhile before packing up camp and heading back to the marina with a side trip down Moqui canyon on the way.