After rolling in to Jordan and Taryn's house around 3 am we found their couch and air mattress to be exceedingly comfortable; we slept soundly till time for meeting up with Drew Hoopes et al, Rich Hoopes et al, and the aforementioned J & T at a great pool in SLC. The pool was a highlight for me since they had 5, 7, and 10 m platforms, from which I was able to reacquaint myself with jumping/flipping/twisting from high things in preparation for the red rock ledges of Powell.
The next day was spent preparing the more needful things for the lake, but late Saturday the 20th finally found us in what later came to be known as Bum Crack Cove:
(obviously)
The top of our Bum Crack Mountain seems to have been visited before by one of the Hoopes kids:
(which is kind of fitting if you know Jordan and the typical height of his trousers - not that I've room to judge, just sayin')
The lake experience was all I was hoping for and more:
1. Spiffy Hats (courtesy of grandpa) and Fancy Eyewear
2. Big canyons nearly full (the lake was only about 40' below full pool when we were there)
3. Excursions into said canyons in order to ruminate on some ruins, and run down the hottest sand hill on planet earth. Drew and I braved the scorching sand with a little technique I learned from the lizards: you run as fast as you can for as long as you can, then quickly stop and dig down a few inches to the cool sand below, rest in it for a bit, then repeat. We ascended, then traversed the hill in the last two photos above till we found a good spot where the idea was to run down, as Drew put it: "till we yard sale".
4. Water and red rock, enough said.
5. A water skiing grandma, with great form no less! Liv skied too, between my legs on the double skis. But with Drew being a. the only adult on board, and b. slightly occupied with driving the boat, there are no pictures to show how much she loved the experience. Actually, no picture could show how much she loved it, because she didn't. Next year.
6. Cousin bonding time. Liv loved, loved, loved being with Megan, Whitney, Andrew, Mathew and James for 16 hours of wakeful time every day. And Aunt Jenny too.
8. The calm evenings when the temps finally start to drop, the sky goes all molten lava, and your belly is full of good food. Also, If you've ever wondered how far the stars move (or better said- how many degrees the earth rotates) in 30 minutes, the last photo is your answer. That was a 30 minute exposure with the camera on a tripod. Those star rotatey pictures are tough because it's not easy to guess what the optimal camera settings are going to be, and since it takes 30 minutes for each one it took me a few nights to even start to get the hang of it.
We left Lake Powell on Wednesday the 24th, and with a few minor vehicular hiccups (none of which can be attributed to the 'burb's old age - more of what we might call "user error") made it out of the desert and back into, well coming from Washington the whole state is a desert, but Mapleton is certainly less deserty, especially after this wet year.
The last couple days in Utah were spent playing dress up...
3 comments:
How you know when a post is good.
1. It makes you laugh.
2. It makes you smile.
3. It makes you wish you had been there in person.
4. It has a joke about bum cracks and Jordan (juxtaposed). I had to pull Jared over to the computer for that one.
5. It contains pictures of your son doing something that you didn't know he could do (go Matthew!).
Thanks for documenting Jaron. You should become more of a regular on this blog, you know.
Jarom - you should narrate more often. Loved the stories and the photos were amazing. Esp the story of pushing through all night. You brave, brave family. :)
WOW! Those Lake Powell pictures are amazing. I love them!!!
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