LAKE POWELL 2009

This year our Ellis family Reunion took place in Lake Powell, on a house boat, surrounded by oh so warm water, with random ohhhs and ahhhhs at all the stars, and breath taking scenery!! Lake Powell is so HUGE and around every turn there is a different rocky mountain or inlet to see. The weather was a little unpredicatable at times. For the most part it was hot and sunny, perfect jump in the lake to cool off weather. Then we had our own little Titantic moment. Here's what happened. After lunch our whole crew was basically taking it easy inside the Desert Dream reading, napping or grazing on munchies still. Clayton was in with all his boy cousins having wrestling wars in a one of the bedrooms. I was on the top deck of the boat taking pictures of Hayden playing in the red dirt, and Justin was sleeping away in my bedroom. All of a sudden out of nowhere, huge winds came up. The heavy bar stools next to me flew off the boat and the bedding we were using started flying all around the top deck. At first we thought "Oh no biggie" then the boat started drifting....

The boat is anchored down by 4 four ropes tied to 3 foot long stakes that are pounded into the the rocky ground. All of these stakes were pulled out of the ground with such force that some of them whippped back at us really hard. We are lucky noone was in the path of those stakes. Max(brother) Joe (B-in-law) Layne (Uncle) were trying to make sure the sea dos were out of the way and used them to start pulling the boat away from the rocks. As the stakes came whipping out of the ground I was yelling at Hayden to stay were he was at. He was trying to get back on the boat but I could see our steal plank used to connect the boat to the land was slipping and soon fell into the water. My cousing Mitch heard me yelling and quickly jumped off the boat and picked up Hayden just in time for both of them to turn around and see the rest of us in the boat drifting away! As we are coming really close to a huge rocky mountain I can still hear Hayden screaming on the island. Our engine is not working and Uncle Joe can't get any power to the house boat, one of the ropes we tie off with had wrapped itself around a propler. Everyone is in full on panick now to get anything that can fly off tied down. Pillows, sleeping bags, foam mattresses, floating tubes, even things that had good weight on them like those bar stools had to be secured down. It starts to hail! Yes Hail! And Hayden, Mitch and my Aunt Gail are stuck on that island!! I yell to Max to tell him to go get them! At that same moment our boat crashed into a rock mountain. Max cam back, shelding Hayden from the storm with his own body, to the back of the boat. Hayden was still crying and shaking pretty bad. He thought we were never coming back for him. We had put all kids with life jackets on and I set up a movie for them on my portable DVD Player to take attention off all the craziness and focus on some good ole toons. I have to say after I sat Hayden down to watch Mickey Mouse he was just fine.

The men used the tied ropes to get Desert Drem towed away from the rocks by two sea dos and the ski boat. The hail came and went within a minute and all of this took place over about 5 minutes. After we were a good distance from any bank to crash into Mitch, and dad went diving down to free the propler from the ropes. We towed Desert Dream to a small docking station called The Dangling Rope and had the engine and generator looked at. While we were being towed me, Lacie(s-in-law) and my cousins Lindsay, and Haylee felt a need to do a dance off between the ski boat and house boat. We are so silly.

We had a couple more winds storms and rain sprinkle on us but nothing to worry about, the rest of the time was used up swimming, kakaing, tubing, and a little bribbing and alot of forcing to make Clayton try out skiing.

The promise of $2 whole dollars to take to the dollars store gave Clayton enough reason to humor me in trying to ski. It took five tries and having Mitch dive in to help steady Clay, but then he got up. And stayed up for a long time for his first try! We didn't get a single picture of him looking up, he probably was too focused on holding on the rope to even think to enjoy the scenery pass by!

So much more to say but I will have to do separte posts!