Glen Canyon – Lake Powell

Camping in Glen Canyon on the shores of Lake Powell.     We did learn that fishermen and boaters make terrible campers hehe. You can’t quite see it in this picture with the tree in the way but there was one rain cloud just dumping on the other side of the lake.  We were watching it for a while while we cooked some pasta and got ready for the night, then I noticed that our tent was set up in a bit of a depression.  We pulled up stakes and moved the tent to a slopped spot with better drainage “just in case.”   An hour or two later with it still headed our way we started putting the rain covers on the motorcycle bags and stashing all of our gear under the tent vestibules.

When the rain reached us it was sudden, like someone flipping a switch on a fire hose.  At that moment the 20 or so boaters camping around us all scrambled for cover frantically trying to cover everything.  It was coming down in buckets!  I thought it was hilarious.  Hellooooo?  Giant rain storm slowly coming this way for the past 3 hours….  What did you think was going to happen?

Apparently they’ve been getting huge rain like this for a while.  At the grocery store/marina they said the water level of the whole lake had risen something like 12 feet in the past two weeks.  It had actually put the parking lot under water, we had to park way up the hill on an over flow lot and hike down the road.

Lake Powell is enormous, I never knew there was so much water in the desert.  If I had a boat I would definitely come here and spend a week.  Jet Skis, Fishing, Camping, it would be a blast!

All along the road to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area were these little bushes with tiny blue flowers.   One bush by itself didn’t look like much but with many of them dotting the landscape it painted wide swaths of blue across the desert, very cool.   Unfortunately no pictures of them, there was only about 1/2 inch of shoulder to pull over on and we were going to be hard pressed to make it to the camp site before we were told to be there by.

We did stop midway up Clay Hill Pass, it was just too beautiful not to and to learn a bit about Mormon history.

Heres the nice view from our campsite from the next morning.

Woops!  Missed the ferry!    Neither of us have watches and we aren’t used to having to follow somebody else’s schedule.

The Ferry comes every other hour?   Crap… What Time is it?

Well now that we have a little bit of tine to kill….   Time to see how everyone back home and at work are doing.

Eventually the Charles Hall Ferry chugs along and our journey can continue,  after it rams the pier with a loud crash and turns up the engines to force everything into alignment.   Dang…

Theres only one ferry and these trucks hauled ass up the road to dump their loads of gravel and materials and then race back to the docks to board for the return trip before the ferry leaves again.

The flotilla of house boats at the marina.  Some of these in there were HUGE.

I love the color contrasts of the blue water up against the sandstone cliffs. Lake Powell is really pretty and very big.

A lot of people were out enjoying the nice weather and the sun out on the water and having a totally awesome time.    These guys had quite a party going they had 3 or 4 jet skis going and a couple of other boats tied up along the side of this big house boat.    One of the jet skis went back and fourth close to the ferry a couple of times they waved when they saw me taking pictures (the pic at the top of the post).

Later up the road at an “off the shore marina”  aka drydock we saw some of these houseboats up close.  Some were absolutely massive 50-60 footers, bigger than my whole house.  They were putting an enormous trailer under one with a semi getting ready to put one in the water.   With a boat that big they must have to shut down the entire road to put it in, it would take up both lanes.

Even more boaters!

We eventually made it across and went to check out the park visitors center and to get some gas in Bullfrog.  Gas was over $4 in Bullfrog, Ouch!!  They kinda have you over a barrel, except for the other side of the lake its 100+ miles by land in both directions to get gas and who knows how far by water. I about fainted when we pulled up to the pump and the last person to fillup paid $685, even if I was given a boat I couldnt afford to actually go anywhere.