Unexcused Absences

We didn’t ski a single turn last winter because we spent January through May in the Bahamas. This year we were due for some skiing, but that would mean giving up a couple months on the Miss Adventure. It’s to my continued annoyance that I can’t be in two places at one time, so we had to choose. Hence, Vail.

China Bowl, Vail

Vail is possibly the most famous ski area in America, maybe second to Aspen. The area is adjacent to, and four times as big as, Beaver Creek, where we spent five winters in a row up until our 2015/2016 winter in the Bahamas. This year Heather found (and rented for us) the second-smallest condo in Vail, located across from Solaris Plaza and a six minute walk from Gondola One.

Our condo; second floor, far right, foreground

We flew out the day after the MLK long weekend, with the plan to stay until the first weekend of spring break. Since we didn’t want to be inconvenienced by actually working at the resort, with only 43 potential days of skiing in our schedule, we chose not to re-apply for our on-hill jobs that we had at the Beav (Vail and Beaver Creek are all one big happy company, so getting work at Vail would have been easy).

Vail Village

The weather in Colorado did not look promising at the beginning of the season. Vail had to delay its opening, and was plagued by warm temperatures and no snow all through November. Fortunately, in December, Al Gore relented and allowed some cold and snow to hit the Rockies. The Colorado resorts received almost an entire winter’s worth of snow in the seven weeks starting early December. And, because timing is everything, we arrived for that last week of heavy snow, during the best conditions of the season.

Lots of snow in the West Vail Mall parking lot

We tried to ease our ski muscles into shape, we really did, but the skiing was so terrific that we worked ourselves to exhaustion the first five days. Our fifth day was easily our second best powder skiing day ever, topped only by an incredible session in the French Alps in 2013. The powder in the back bowls was deep and plentiful. For some reason the resort was not crowded at all – possibly because the locals had already enjoyed 6+ weeks of continuous powder skiing. It was close to noon when we took the series of photos below in Siberia Bowl and Inner Mongolia Bowl.

Heather gets some quality powder time

Bolshoi Ballroom in Siberia Bowl

That’s me sampling a pristine powder field, Inner Mongolia Bowl

After the storm track returned to normal (one snowfall every 7-10 days), we got down to some serious socializing, and met up with our friends Greg and Susan, Audre and Dimitri, Elizabeth and Michael, Ellen and Emil, Harry and Debbie, Jeff and Christine, plus Praz, Megan, Jen, Guy, Sean, Kevin, “Tahoe” Joe, “Other” Kent, and Mike. We had several visits to the spa at the Four Seasons, courtesy of our friends who own a condo there, and we took evening walks through Vail Village and visited our favorite restaurants (the Minturn Saloon, Crazy Mountain Brewery, Tiamo, Moe’s BBQ, Vendetta’s, Blue Moose Pizza). Plus there were parties and gatherings and we basically didn’t have a free minute for a month and a half.

Heather enjoys an afternoon skate

The Vail Chapel covers all the bases

A clearing winter storm

We did wander over to Beaver Creek once or twice a week for either social skiing or the Monday Town Series races. As in previous years, we were very un-American and had no car, but the public transportation in Eagle County is fantastic and the lack of car never really bothered us. The Race Series was very good to us, and we won some great stuff, including race gloves (that I traded with a friend who had won a backpack), a boot bag, thermal base-layers, two restaurant gift certificates, a hard-sided ski carrier, and a GoPro (actually we each won a GoPro but we sold one at a nice discount to a friend).

Heather stirs some powder on Grouse Mountain, Beaver Creek

Early morning at the Beav

Kent cruises Raven’s Ridge, Beaver Creek, in a foot of powder

Our goal at the start of our visit was to ski every single day, at least 10 runs and/or 15,000 vertical feet (as measured by Vail’s Epic Mix iPhone app). Part-way into the season we upped our goal to 12 runs and/or 18k vert per day (it’s good to have goals). Along the way I decided to see how long it would take to ride every single lift in Vail once and (only once), all 24 of them. One day when Heather was at a PSIA clinic I caught first chair in Lions Head and then worked my way around the resort. It turns out it takes 30,218 vertical feet and four hours 45 minutes to complete the circuit.

Either “Daft Punk” or a very cold day at Vail

The weather gods continued to smile, because our last day we woke to 8 inches of fresh powder. This was on top of another 10 inches over the previous couple days, so the slopes skied a lot deeper than 8 inches. By quittin’ time I had amassed 829,622 vertical feet and 548 lift rides over 43 straight days. Heather had two days when she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t ski, so she ended up with about 45k feet fewer. But because we’re chronic over-achievers, at least when it comes to vacationing, we averaged over 19k feet and 12.7 lift rides per day. I feel that what we lack in personal ambition, we more than make up for with vacation acumen.

Final turns of the 2017 ski season

We finished our winter out west with a camping trip to Moab, Utah, with our friends Greg and Susan, plus Jen and her dog Miller. Greg and Susan are serious over-achievers when it comes to outdoor stuff. They have an entire cargo van filled with mountain bikes, tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear, coolers, and food. We camped on the mesa above the town for two nights. The first night was perfect, if a little cold; calm wind, clear skies, and temperatures around freezing. The second night was a lot warmer, but also a lot windier, and wasn’t quite as pleasant; a fine film of Utah dust had covered everything by morning. But, we had spent the previous evening at the fantastic Moab Brewery, so no one was too put out.

Taking Susan’s Jeep seriously off-road

Our campsite on Slickrock

A canyon vista near Moab

Back at Susan and Greg’s house near Beaver Creek, we had one final day to do laundry, pack, and visit the Gore Range Brewery (there’s a pattern developing here, I just can’t put my finger on it). Then it was an easy flight home, and with a six-day turn-around we will hopefully be on our way to the Bahamas to take our trawler, Miss Adventure, on her spring cruise through the Exumas and other Bahamian Out Islands.

Champagne powder, Inner Mongolia Bowl

More powder; Heather in Siberia Bowl

Still more powder in Blue Sky Basin

Jen (& Miller) at Crazy Mountain Brewery

“No matter what the cows say”

A hike near Moab

Heather negotiates with Miller regarding appropriate puddle-time

Snow in Vail Village

“Reverse ski tracks” from a windstorm

One more powder pic; me in the “white room”

As if spending the summer on our canal boat in France was not enough, after putting Après Ski to bed for the winter the three of us (me, Heather, Dad) drove to a little village in Brittany and rented a canal boat with our friend Jen and her parents.

Our rental boat on the pontoon at Sucé-sur-Erdre

Cruising in Brittany is special for us, because the western France canals do not connect with the rest of the country’s inland waterway network. So bringing our boat here would require an expensive over-land journey.

The crew of “Classique 46”

The rental boat was about 45 feet long, with four staterooms, quite a step up from our little canal boat. We started our trip from Nort-sur-Erdre, a small town 15 miles north of Nantes. After the obligatory checkout procedure – “Have you ever piloted a boat?” “Yes, a few times…” – we provisioned at the local store and cruised a couple hours south to Sucé-sur-Erdre, where we had a delicious “welcome-to-France” meal with our friends.

One of many Châteaux on the Erdre River

The following day, after a short cruise through “château alley,” we backtracked up river and entered the Canal de Nantes à Brest. Our stop for the night was in Blain, home to Château de la Groulais.

Château de la Groulais

From Blain, our next stop was Redon, the crossroads of the Brittany canal network. I took the train back to Nort-sur-Erdre to bring the car forward to Redon, so we’d have some transportation for a road trip in a few days’ time. The harbor in Redon connects to the river La Vilaine, which in turn connects to the Atlantic Ocean, so the harbor had some ocean-going boats, in addition to the usual canal boats.

The harbor at Redon

The following day we continued westward and turned up a very narrow (VERY narrow…) side river, which ended at a small boat harbor in La Gacilly. The town bills itself as an “artist’s town”, and was full of shops featuring local painters, sculptors, and potters, and also had a large outdoor display featuring photographers from around the world.

The narrow river to La Gacilly

Champagne for happy hour

An ornate support post

The entrance to the Canal de Nantes-a-Brest

The next day we backtracked to the Nantes-Brest canal and again turned west. Our stop for the night was in Malestroit, with its beautiful (and very old) village center. The town’s favorite son is Roger Plisson, who built, by hand, a tiny wooden sailing ship in the mid 1960’s, launched it into the canal, cruised downstream to the Atlantic, and then sailed around the world over the following 18 months. The boat, on display in the town hall’s parking lot, can’t have been more than about 20 feet long.

Roger Plisson’s tiny boat

Our boat leaves a lock

Malestroit centre-ville

Just outside of town is a museum dedicated to the French Resistance, which we toured the following morning. We didn’t have as much time as we wanted (the only taxi driver in town needed to go to another appointment) but it was still very interesting, and filled with artifacts from the resistance effort. The local area was famous during WW II as a large resistance camp that successfully fought off an attack by the Nazis.

Radio transmitter hidden in a suitcase

Portable electric generator for a resistance radio operator

US Army magazine from WW II

Malestroit

Turning back to the east, we parked at a rural mooring on the Oust River, beneath some cliffs that were very popular with the local rock-climbing club. I should note that other than the first day, which was cool and breezy, the rest of our cruise featured warm, sunny days, quite a rarity in Brittany.

Rural parking

Once back in Redon for our second visit, the six of us took our rental van and drove to Josselin, further west on the Nantes-Brest Canal but unfortunately too far for us to visit by boat. The main feature of the town is the imposing Château de Josselin on the hill above a bend in the canal. We ate a delicious lunch in town (Pizzeria du Château), visited the church (including a climb up the tower), then toured the Château and the grounds, before driving back to Redon.

From the church tower in Josselin

The Château seen from the canal

Château de Josselin

On our final full day, we cruised north on the Vilaine river to Messac-Guipry, a beautiful trip on a wide river. We tied up below the final lock and packed up the boat, and I took a train back to Redon to get the car.

Heading north from Redon

After turning in the boat and dropping Jen and her parents at the train station, the three of us visited a nearby automobile museum in Lohéac, a truly amazing display of well-known (Ferrari, Peugeot, Mercedes) and obscure (Facel Vega, Delahaye, Panhard) cars. The main collection featured “regular” cars from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, but there were also some very old cars (Aries, Darmont, Amilcar) as well as a whole section of race cars. The town is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, the center of the triangle formed by Nantes, Rennes, and Vannes, but you owe yourself a visit if you have any interest at all in historical automobiles.

A Delahaye 135M from the 1930’s

The Tatra 603 from Czechoslovakia

A Panhard PL17 from the 1960’s

With that, we drove to Charles-de-Gaulle Airport north of Paris, spent a quick night, and were up at 5am for our flight home. We had a terrific time cruising the canals of Brittany, so thank you to Jen, Cynthia, and Mark Stange for the delightful cruise!

And so ended our sixth summer in France. We are headed back to America to our trawler, Miss Adventure, so our next post will be from a boatyard in southern Georgia.

Our route through Brittany

An affordable canal boat

Cruising on the Nantes-Brest Canal

The Vilaine River in classic Brittany weather

Hiking near the Oust river

At the Redon Maritime Museum

Redon

Leaving a lock on the Nantes-Brest Canal

Yummy Belgian beer

Slightly skewed patissier

A gargoyle in Blain

The port in La Gacilly

The lock in Malestroit

The Vilaine River near Messac

The single-cylinder Velam Isetta

A late ’60’s NSU 1200 TT

A 1942 Hydromobile amphibious vehicle

A whole room full of modern race cars at Lohéac

I will be the first to admit that I have been extremely lax about blog post for quite some time. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve posted since the first week of our cruise — to the Bahamas. There are quite a few excuses (preparing for the Bahamas, living in the Bahamas, enjoying the Bahamas, actually working from the Bahamas), but all pretty lame when you consider Dr. V. has kept up with his regular postings.

I have lots of things to share with my good readers, including a lot of tips on provisioning, cooking and cruising in the Bahamas. It seems silly to post on the Bahamas from France. Never-the-less, I shall give it a try!

Look for future posts on our Bahamas cruise about:

-safety when cruising and the importance of a ditch bag

-provisioning

-recipes for cruisers

Our Bahamian winter proved to be a real adventure (requiring real work), but absolutely worth the effort. Now that we are ‘relaxing’ on the canals, it’s time for me to catch up!

The Exumas, where sea and sky merge

July 9 to July 16, 2016. Based on the order of posts, it looks like we jumped right from the Bahamas to France. But the intervening month was filled with lots of work; packing up Miss Adventure for the summer, getting ready for our summer on Après Ski, and four weeks of actual work at NASA. That, plus all the social events with our long lost friends in the DC area, and we didn’t have much down-time in June.

“Après Ski’s” winter home in Lagarde

Once we got to France, none of that changed. We had lots of socializing to do with our boat friends Peter and Jo (who had just arrived in France from Australia), plus finishing up the solar panel installation project on Après Ski, plus provisioning, plus wine tasting. We did take time to watch the France vs. Germany Eurocup semifinal soccer match. The local pizza restaurant in Lagarde, the one that is normally only open Sundays from 7pm to 10pm, opened specially for the match on Wednesday evening. “Opened,” in the sense that they opened the doors and turned on the big TV on the wall, but the “restaurant” didn’t go so far as to serve dinner. The game was excellent, if you’re a French fan; they won 2-0, and would go on to compete in the final a few days later, where unfortunately they lost to Portugal 0-1.

A misty morning in Lagarde

Kitchen closed during the match

Eurocup France vs. Germany game

We made it out of the marina at Lagarde on the third afternoon, and drove a short hour west with Peter and Jo (on Joyeux) to the small halte nautique at Xures. Peter helped us move our rental car ahead to St. Nicolas-le-Port, the nearest canal port with a train station. We are keeping the car for three weeks instead of the normal one, because we have two road trips to make the next two weekends, plus we need to visit our favorite Champagne producer to stock up for the summer. And because we are keeping the car with us, any long-term parking spot for the boat must include a nearby train station so we can retrieve or pre-position the car.

Straw bales somewhere in Lorraine

After St. Nicolas, we cruised straight through Nancy, pausing only for supplies at the Intermarché, and continued to the canal junction with the Moselle River, stopping in Pompey for the night. It’s a nice little town just below one of the big gauge river locks, and we took a stroll through the village before eating Heather’s delicious poached egg salad with a side of rabbit and mushroom terrine for dinner and heading to bed.

Dinner on deck

The next day we cruised upstream on the Moselle to Toul, which has a very friendly and active canal port just outside the city walls. The military architect Vauban designed the ramparts in the 18th century, most of which are still standing today. Once we settled in Toul, I retrieved the car from St. Nicolas and we drove an hour north to Verdun, to visit the newly re-opened WW I museum/memorial at Fleury-devant-Douaumont. This museum was closed the last time we were through here two years ago, under renovation for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun, which lasted from mid February into late autumn of 1916.

Retractable turrets on a WW I fort near Verdun

The Battle of Verdun was a defining battle in French history, and its impacts still resonates today. Over 70% of all French soldiers in WW I fought in the battle, and it claimed close to half a million French casualties. It was the longest and largest battle of the war on the Western Front. Soldiers referred to Verdun as “the furnace,” for how much suffering and carnage they had to endure. Some 60 million artillery shells were fired during the 10 months of battle, and the landscape in many places is still pocked with overlapping craters.

Here are the Americans!

In addition to the numerous military artifacts, the newly-renovated museum contains a number of paintings and letters by front-line soldiers. It also has a large display on the “Voie Sacré” (the sacred way), which was the 72km supply line from the large train terminal at Bar-le-Duc to the battlefields at Verdun. The numbers on this vital supply line are impressive; 3,500 trucks and 800 ambulances were dedicated to the road, and between March and December 1916 one vehicle passed every 14 seconds. Sixteen engineering battalions were dedicated just for road maintenance. Special quarries were opened up nearby, and 8,500 men worked around the clock to maintain the road and keep the supply lines open.

A marker on the “Voi Sacrée” between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun

After the “official” museum, we visited a smaller museum in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, one stocked entirely with objects found by one local family. The driving force, Jean-Paul de Vries, began collecting WW I artifacts in elementary school, and when he was 11 he showed up one day with a collection of objects for show-and-tell. The teacher called the principal, the principal called the gendarme, and the school was evacuated while the bomb squad went to work. Some of Jean-Paul’s found objects turned out to be unexploded shells. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and he lived to build an immense collection of WW I artifacts, most of which he’s found in the fields and forests around his home town. The museum is absolutely worth a detour if you’re in the Verdun area.

Just a few of the guns in Jean-Paul’s collection

Old-style American dog-tags

Hundred-year-old canteens of all kinds

That night in Verdun, after dinner at our favorite restaurant, Chez Anna Marie, we saw the July 14 fireworks. The French seem to know their fireworks, and the display in Verdun was no exception. The shells were fired from the main bridge above the canal port, and we had great seats in a cafe overlooking the river. We finally got back to the boat in Toul after 1am, in time to get a little sleep before our long drive the next day.

The Verdun waterfront before the fireworks

Verdun fireworks

Feu d’Artifices

The destination for our first road trip was Paris, but on the way we stopped in to our favorite Champagne producer for a visit. They were bottling that day, so we got to see the action on their vintage equipment; Zimmerlin-Flamant is a small producer, with only two hectares (about 5 acres) under cultivation, so everything at this Premier Cru producer is done by hand.

Bottling at Zimmerlin-Flamant Champagne

Vineyards in the Marne Valley

More bottling at Z-F Champagne

Once in Paris, we visited the Maritime Museum, one that I’ve wanted to see for years. Later that evening was the real reason for our visit; a good friend of ours (an American who lives in Paris) celebrated her 40th birthday by hiring a riverboat on the Seine for the party. Hard to turn down an invitation to sit on a boat and drink French wine and eat French food and cheese under the Eiffel Tower. The party was epic; a bunch of folks we knew came over from the US, and we met some of her French friends, and I think we finally made it back to our hotel at 2 am.

The party on the Seine in Paris

Canal boating, socializing, battlefield visits, fireworks, and a party on the Seine River in Paris; not a bad start to our 2016 summer cruise.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 1

• Engine Hours: 15
• Kilometers: 81
• Locks: 22
• Moorings: 56 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 15
• Kilometers: 81
• Locks: 22
• Moorings: 56 Euros

France 2016 – Week 1 Route

La Tour Eiffel

Susanne and Mark at the party

The tower in French colors

The birthday girl with her cake

French naval ship models

A failed early attempt at a diving suit

Container ship model

A WW I German military cemetery in Lorraine

Passing Notre Dame

A rural church near Toul

The Louvre seen from the party boat

Lake Powell defies proportions. Like its immediate downstream neighbor, The Grand Canyon, photos simply cannot convey the vastness and complexity of the landscape. I’ve heard the landscape described as fractal, a pattern that repeats at every scale, an accurate description. The high-walled canyons open to smaller canyons, which open to smaller canyons …

Lots of houseboats at Bullfrog, about halfway up the lake

Several years ago, our friends from Beaver Creek, Elizabeth and Michael, invited us to join them on their 60 foot (!) houseboat on Lake Powell. In September, our busy vacation schedule and their work schedules finally aligned and we were able to join them aboard the good ship MT Pockets for a week at Lake Powell.

Towing the waterski boat north on Lake Powell

What and where is Lake Powell? It’s a giant, artificial lake formed by the Colorado River. The river flows through the steep walls of Glen Canyon while passing through the desert lands of Utah and Arizona. In the 1950’s, a 600-foot high (controversial) dam was build in Glen Canyon to regulate floods, provide a stable water supply for farm irrigation, and supply electricity to the growing Southwest. Now the canyon, along with numberous side canyons, hosts a lake hundreds of feet in depth and over 150 miles long. Water laps canyon walls once inaccessible to all but the ravens and vultures.

The enormous cliffs at about mile 115

Elizabeth and Michael have been coming to the lake as a family for 26 years, although Mike has been visiting since he was a young child. They both know the lake very well. Our well-prepared hosts packed delicious food, tools and entertainment for any possible scenario we might encounter. Fortunately, we had perfect weather, no wind, no rain, highs in the 80’s and lows in the 60’s, so the sugar-cube slingshot and rainy-day card games went unused while the s’mores supplies were completely devoured.

Perfect boating conditions

After arriving and loading the boat at 2am (we were foiled by a massive peach festival which sold out nearly every hotel room in western Colorado and south-east Utah) we cruised north on our first day for about five hours to Good Hope Bay. This wide area in the lake with several side canyons sits close to the lake’s northern limit of navigability. While Mike and Kent tended the big boat, Elizabeth and I headed out in the ski boat to scout out potential anchorages.

Our “anchorage” on Good Hope Bay

A really really tall cliff

The Milky Way seen from the top deck

A sheer cliff face hundreds of feet tall

Why did we have to scout the anchorages if Elizabeth and Michael knew this section of the lake so well? Due to the Rocky Mountains’ varying level of spring snow melt, Lake Powell is unlike any other body of water; its coastline changes daily, an inch or more a day, typically changing 50 feet or more in a year. A beautiful anchorage on a sandy beach could disappear with a 3 foot rise on the lake, or hang inaccessibly high above the water line with a 5 foot drop in the lake.

Kent carrying the anchor to shore — not a typical anchoring procedure!

Anchoring was a complicated exercise, involving beaching the boat, carrying the anchors ashore and securing the boat to the shoreline by looping large lines around boulders or sinking the anchors into the sand. So, the girls scouted and identified anchorages and the boys followed in the larger boat once the anchorage was chosen. After we were settled in for the night, we fired up the grill, opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed the wild surroundings.

Our secret evening hide-away deep in a side canyon

Possibly the best part of being at Lake Powell was the night sky. The cool, clean, dry air of the desert provided excellent star gazing and satellite spotting. With a first-quarter moon, the stars and planets were soon as clear and bright as we’ve ever seen them. Sleeping on the top deck of the boat allowed us to sleep sous les belles etoiles. We lay awake, amazed, on our first night just staring at the stars. I could easily track the progress of the night by watching the milky way and constellations move across the sky.

A starry sky over moonlit rocks

When dawn arrived, it was time for the morning water ski. After a delicious breakfast of Elizabeth’s egg-and-sausage burritos, we gassed up the ski boat (with a pump from the main ship), grabbed some snacks and hit the water. Because the canyons wind and twist, it seemed it was always possible to get nearly perfect conditions to ski. And, you could ski for miles – literally. With Mike and Elizabeth’s excellent coaching, I was even able to drop a ski and try slalom for the first time.

Elizabeth during an early morning pull

The single dark cloud on our time on the Lake was an unfortunate accident when Mike separated his bicep tendon while skiing. Mike is a truly beautiful skier, and we were crushed when he severely injured his arm on the second day. We’re wishing him a speedy recovery from his surgery!

Mike has clearly done this before!

On our one cloudy day, at Mike’s suggestion, we planned a short hike to an area Elizabeth and Mike knew that contained an old uranium mine. Due to circumstances beyond our control, our one hour, mile-long hike became a “Big Hike” of around 7 miles and 4 hours. We trekked off across the open desert (fortunately we always carry extra water) and up to a small ravine our hosts knew. It contained a huge petrified tree, whose trunk was easily as wide as I am tall.

An enormous, petrified tree.

The rest of the week, our days consisted of skiing (except for Mike), exploring, hiking, skiing again, an evening meal and campfire and sleeping on the top deck under the stars. What a great way to enjoy the outdoors and the excellent company of dear friends!

Pretty good scenery for Kent’s slalom session

Some cliff dwellings at the end of a side canyon

Checking out “Defiance House”

Petroglyphs, left by Ancestral Puebloans* about 800 years ago.

A stand of trees from when it was Glenn Canyon, before it was a lake

It was with mixed emotions that we gazed at stunning canyons towering above us while floating on a boat, knowing our presence came at a price. The dam’s waters buried Indian ruins and settler’s villages along with hundreds of feet of what has been described as one of the most beautiful canyons in existence. The dam changed not only has the ecology of Glen Canyon, but the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon (just below the Glen Canyon Dam) as well. The dam provides much-needed power to the southwest (especially Phoenix), and regulates the flow of water for area agriculture. Nature has adapted to the presence of a giant lake in the middle of the desert, and huge flocks of migratory ducks, herons and grebes now visit or inhabit the lake. Humans profoundly changed the area, and we were grateful to have the opportunity to see and explore this amazing site.

Amazing anchorage, good friends, and a campfire for s’mores

Our Lake Powell vacation with Elizabeth and Michael was absolutely one of the most fantastic vacations we’ve ever taken. The combination of desert, canyon and lake must be unique on the planet. The wildness of the place, its enormous scale and the raw beauty of nature made of a heady combination. We highly recommend a trip to Lake Powell if you ever have the opportunity!

Heather drops a ski…

…gets the back foot in…

…balances…

… and skis away as a slalom skier

All alone off Red Canyon

The real desert

Filling the little boat from the big boart

A flock of water chickens

Kent tries that “other” watersport

Kent biffs a slalom turn

Our final morning at anchor

*The ancient inhabitants of this region are no longer referred to as Anasazi as this is a pejorative term coined by the non-native Navajo which roughly means “ancient ones of our enemies.” Ancestral Puebloans is the term preferred term today.