{"id":3107,"date":"2015-07-31T12:15:49","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3107"},"modified":"2015-08-01T00:26:44","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T04:26:44","slug":"girl-meets-west-3-pictured-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3107","title":{"rendered":"Girl Meets West #3: Not How I Pictured This Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you missed the beginning of this series, you may want to go back to Part 1<\/a> and Part 2<\/a> first to read the first two posts of Girl Meets West.<\/p>\n

On the way up to Lake Powell, where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be spending the first two nights, the formerly small people sat at the table and alternated between bursts of card games, video games, reading, and staring out the window at the cacti-laden terrain that seemed to roll higher with each mile. Midway though the journey, Baby-girl pulled out a small notebook I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gotten her for the trip. She began writing down all the details of the last two days, stopping to ask clarifying questions from time to time.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0045\"<\/a>\"IMG_0043\"<\/a>By the time we arrived at Wahweap RV & Campground<\/a>, it was just after dark, so we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a good view of the lake until morning. I was, therefore, thrilled when I opened the curtains the next morning and saw we were closer to the lake than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d thought.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0036\"<\/a>Indeed, the view was inspiring enough to convince Baby-Girl to run over to the general store to buy binoculars with her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trip money.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then we spent some time exploring the grounds and testing out her new purchase.<\/p>\n

As a child, LCB had visited Lake Powell and had wished that he could boat the lake. When we determined we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be stopping at Lake Powell on this trip, LCB immediately mentioned the idea of reserving a boat for one day of our stay.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just put it this way: They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re mighty proud of their boats at Lake Powell.<\/p>\n

But what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taking out a second mortgage if it makes your spouse happy, right? So I gave him my blessing and he reserved a boat. Are you sensing yet that things didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go quite as planned? Because you should be.<\/p>\n

First, we got a late start to the day after all our extended breakfasting, exploring the grounds, deliberating over binoculars, utilizing the aforementioned binoculars, and so forth. Second, you know those dreams where you keep walking and walking and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a hundred and four degrees out and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re carrying several things and your whole family is walking with you and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re complaining about how hot it is and you start to think about how by now you must have sweated out way more than the four glasses of water you consumed that day so you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably in the early stages of dehydration and you also realize that your regular workouts may be lacking a certain rigor because when you walk to the bottom of a very, very large hill-why-not-call-it-a-mountain and realize you have to walk right back up it again you start trudging very, very slowly and you feel like the hill-why-not-call-it-a-mountain might be kicking your glutes (which it is) and then your Baby-Girl asks if you could carry her up because she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tired and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably break into tears right then but you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t because you realize there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no way on God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s green earth that you can carry her right then so she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just going to have to suck it up like a man and haul her own little self up the hill-why-not-call-it-a-mountain one way or the other and the whole time your LCB is oscillating between audible thoughts that go something like A.) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is family vacation time so I feel obligated to convince the formerly small people that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re having fun facing heat exhaustion on their vacation but just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize it yet<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and B.) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I asked two different park employees for directions and tried to clarify with them when I suspected they were sending us in the wrong direction to the wrong marina in the wrong state but they told me I was wrong and so in a foolhardy move I decided to trust them since they are after all park rangers who live here<\/em> but guess what they were totally wrong and now here we are walking a mile in the wrong direction just so we can turn around and walk a mile back to our starting spot so we can then walk another half mile or so in the other direction to the correct marina,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and you have to listen to the whole thing half a gazillion times on your trek to dehydration?<\/p>\n

Well, I had one of those dreams while awake<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In a habit I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure my family finds endearing, I chose an ill-timed moment during one of our ascensions to share a piece of trivia I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d read in some park literature discussing best safety practices:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, did you know six people die here every summer?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

This is also why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d make a horrible elementary school teacher.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0073\"<\/a>Anyhow, we finally made it to the marina, and of course there were unavoidable problems (i.e., they realized they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d lost the ignition key to our boat after getting us all set up in the boat, so they had to find us a new boat, which took\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 more time).<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0056\"<\/a>\"IMG_0071\"<\/a>\"IMG_0061\"<\/a>But we eventually made it onto a boat with an available ignition key, and ended up having two really good hours enjoying the fruits of our second mortgage.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0089\"<\/a>Afterward, we returned to our campsite, built a fire, grilled our dinner, and roasted marshmallows as the sun dipped low in the sky.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0131\"<\/a>The next morning we rose, packed up the RV, and headed north, to higher and drier ground.<\/p>\n

Up next: Our Brush with the Law<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you missed the beginning of this series, you may want to go back to Part 1 and Part 2 first to read the first two posts of Girl Meets West. On the way up to Lake Powell, where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be spending the first two nights, the formerly small people sat at the table and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[1964,1967,1963,1961,1965,1966,1962],"class_list":["post-3107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-off-island-stories","tag-boating-at-lake-powell","tag-camping-life","tag-camping-with-kids-at-lake-powell","tag-lake-powell-camping","tag-renting-power-boats-at-lake-powell","tag-the-hike-that-seemed-to-never-end","tag-wahweap-rv-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}