fun at lake powell, come hell or high water

we recently took a trip to lake powell with my dad's side of the family. we left work tuesday and drove the four hours to bullfrog marina to meet my parents. due to extrenuating circumstances, we weren't able to get away as early as we had planned and were an hour late meeting my parents at the dock. we loaded our things into the boat in the dark and i was unaware of the breeze blowing pretty forcefully...until we got out into the channel. the wind was blowing EXTREMELY hard and the waves were HUGE! {think 5 times the wave pool waves} we had to go fast because the minute the boat slowed down, water came spilling over the bow and into the boat soaking us all. i sat up front with my cousin jess who was holding a giant spotlight to watch for rocks and bouys. dad had mapped the course back to the houseboat on his handheld GPS and was too busy making sure he was on the right course to watch the water in front of him. a couple of times jess would yell out "ROCK!" and my dad would either let off the gass completely {meaning buckets of water would come rushing into the boat} or turn around sharply {which would cause us to get off course} there were moments were i had no idea which direction we were headed. i held onto the seat where i was sitting real tight {my hands were sore the next day} and i wished i wasn't sitting up front where i could fall out of the boat so easily. of all the times i have been to lake powell {there are pictures of me there while still in diapers} i can only think of one time where i was even close to the level of scaredness i felt as we drove to the houseboat that night. when we finally made it to the houseboat, i was exhausted. we made our bed on the roof of the houseboat and bid everyone goodnight. what a good night it turned out to be! the wind blew so hard all night, we had to hang onto our sheets, sleeping bags, pillows for dear life. at one point during the night one of our sleeping bags almost blew over the edge. chris sprung up to grab it and as soon as his head was off his pillow it flew into the water. by morning we had managed to drop both pillows into the lake {don't worry though, each were recovered and have since been cleaned} the wind continued to blow all the next day and didn't stop until around 9 pm the next night. we spent the majority of that first day in the houseboat so when the next morning rolled around chris and i were ready for a nice morning ski ride. the rest of the trip proved to be another great one {lots of playing in the water, eating good food, and not to be missed when with the jones clan--hiking on the red rocks}