Flattering Picture of us both, I know!
At five A.M. Friday the 23rd of July, my family headed to Powell. Such an hour in the Jensen home is only known by the sound of Dad's blender or when still awake from the night before, which I can assure you, never was me! This fact made for a quite rude awakening hour for a few of us. Not all of us were thrilled.
D and I jumped in the Dooley with Manda driving (And YES, my baby sister is THE BEST at driving trucks with trailers or boats…literally, almost better than my Dad, Sorry Pops). Mom, Dad, and Megi took another car, and picked Josh up on the way down south.
(I'll tell you one thing about our family: When rising early, don't mess with Joshy till his Mickey D meal, just give Meg a pillow, and I need a coffee = all problems solved! ... Slight exaggeration?)
At Tikaboo (which is compromised of only the hotel) we tried to check into our hotel, but were way too early. We put our boat in at Bullfrog and went to find a good spot to jump in.
We all got to surf a few times but when it started to get warm, and none of us had had a full, good night sleep, we decided to seek shade and food. We found a nice cave in a nearby canyon to park the boat in and quickly pulled out lunch. We turned on some music and fished a bit.
Let me clarify on the "fishing": Josh fished. Amanda had nothing to do with it, and refused to be told that there was even a possiblity of one fish being in the lake (sound like Manda? I've just about died on snorkling adventures with her, I still have nightmares!). Mom was cool with it as long as no fish touched the clean boat. I helped Josh. Dad and D were indifferent. No one caught anything, but we saw plenty of carp when we used cheese as bait. Don't tell Amanda.
When lunch was put away and we were headed further down the canyon, an extremely loud, obnoxiously shrill beeping started coming from the driver's seat. The temp gauge said the boat was over heating. We turned the boat right off, in the middle of the canyon and the sun, and sat there for awhile debating what to do. We turned the boat on periodically, to make sure it was still broke, and to try to get some water running through the engine to help cool it off, but it didn't help.
We've now had the boat 4 years and it's never broken down, so we shoulda known the trip we don't bring the oars on, is the trip the boat finally does break down. Oops!
We were planning on sitting awhile.
We tried to call into a marina but the radios weren't working, or we didn't know how to use them, but no one could admit to that.
We finally flagged down someone on jet ski's to take one of us to the mouth of the canyon, where we could get better reception, and call a tow in. The guy on the jet ski kinda half said ok and the wife (who was hilarious) said they'd tow us out in a jiffy, or something to that affect. Josh jumped on the back of the man's' jet ski and off they went.
We figured they would go to the edge of the canyon and head back. About an hour later we floaters, left on the boat, got out the pool floaties.
D and I tried to do some climbing from straight out of the water, and without climbing shoes. D did well, I cut a pretty good gash in my big toe… story of my life.
We had been goofing off for maybe 20 minutes, when a boat and a few jet ski's come through the canyon. We didn't think a thing of it until Josh poked his head around and gave us a little wave. Apparently he had been riding their jet ski's and hanging out like he was one of the family! (He had been caught by a Diversion. Hahaha, couldn't resist!)
They gave us a tow back to the Bullfrog dock. The afore mentioned funny lady hopped on a tube to also get pulled in. That was a hoot and a half to watch!
My family hates the dock. And for good reason! There are way too many people around and all of us know, and like to voice, the fact that the others are not doing what should be done (usually we keep it amoungst ourselves). Luckily our towers got us in real easy and only when we took matters into our own hand did things go awry.
Somehow, Meg ended up in the water, between the dock and the boat. Mom ended up with a noose around her neck, laying on the coolers. Of course, Manda had caught the giggles when she watched whatever had happened to Meg and Mom. Needless to say, everyone was staring at us! Not again.
Meg actually suffered the worst! She almost pulled a fingernail off, had to be in the dock water (have you seen the size of the fish there?), and then suffered the embarrassment of everyone checking up to see if she was ok.
I'm still not quite sure how Mom ended up where she was.
After the excitement, Manda pulled the trailer right up next to the dock, I tied an excellent knot (figure 8, thank you very much), and we pulled the boat out. We found some shade to try to fix the boat. Apparently a belt had come off that ran the water pump to cool the engine. The guys put it all back together and we figured we could finish out the trip.
We called it a night and headed to Tikaboo to shower. We had an odd encounter with two kids who had no one to socialize with except guests, and their Jugaloo mom (sad and hillarious is possible). We ate at the Bullfrog hotel and hung out on the patio for awhile, watched the sunset, then headed back to the rooms.
When we set out to the lake the next morning we kept telling ourselves that the boat would be perfectly fine.
It wasn't.
Us girls dropped the guys in the water. They got in a fight with another boat (minor fight, we've seen worse. Must I reiterate: we hate the dock). We took off to park the truck, and finish the fight (would you expect less of us girls? I didn't think so).
As we were walking back to the dock to get on the boat, we noticed the boat wasn't moving. So we grabbed the walky-talkies (second pair, that we knew how to use) and called in to find out the boat only lasted about two minutes, and we were headed home.
Bummer.
On the way out we passed a really awesome climbing area so this is what D looked like the whole way.
By the way, this is what he looks like EVERY time we pass ANY climbing. Poor me.
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