Lake Powell: Day 1

If you don't have a boat and you've never been to Lake Powell this picture may not be as disappointing to you as some others of you with boating experience:

This is what our prop looked like by 8:30am on our first full day at Lake Powell! We were in the main channel when this happened making the last turn into our destination at Last Chance. We are lucky that no one got hurt. Right after we hit the rock we saw a house boat and another boat just barely miss it. We were able to flag down the house boat that called back to the marina for us. They arranged for a rescue tow boat to come and get us which would take 2-3 hours. After waiting a few hours we realized we had cell service off and on. We made several phone calls to my brother at home who were about to drive up to meet us. Got a lot of frustrating information from the marina and decided that we need to flag someone down. During the flagging down process of several boats my dad broke his toe! ouch! Finally someone was willing to tow us back. We pulled the boat out with ropes. We stayed the night at our campsite and drove home today. Of course today the weather was BEAUTIFUL! Amazingly the main channel was glassy (which never happens) as we drove away... we kept thinking "there is something we are supposed to learn from this experience" so here are a few things we've learned so far:

1) Lake Powell "rescue" won't order the rescue till they have a credit card on file, good thing 911 doesn't work that way eh?
2) they charge you $250/hour
3) rescues are their lowest priority the reason we were waiting for so long is because we had to wait for the scheduled tours to be completed before a driver was available
4) 1-2 hours really means 9+ hours, good thing we weren't sinking or had a 6 month pregnant lady and 2 year old on board!
5) if it gets too late and your still haven't been rescued they will make you wait over night for help
6) you still need sunscreen even though it looks like its about to rain
7) Go to Lake Powell with a friend so you will have help if you need it because flagging down someone may take hours and even if someone stops a good $$$ bribe doesn't necessarily work either.

That being said we are very grateful for our prayers being answered, our safety and the wonderful family from Provo that towed us back to the marina.

Here's a picture of Kevin, my mom and Emerson waiting to be rescued. Emerson threw in ALL the rocks and then mom my fished them out of the water several times so he could throw them back in again.

Matt showed Emerson this handy little hole in our tent that he could can crawl out of.

Above is the caterpillar that Kevin saved. I thought Emerson would like to watch it but the second I pointed it out he tried to stomp on it!