Of Mice and Rocks

We just got off our annual week on the houseboat on Lake Powell. The most impressive statistics of the week: four propellers and five mice. I'll get to them in a moment. The family and friends came together in Page, AZ on Saturday night the 20th from different parts of the country: Boston, New York City, Florida, Salt Lake City, Santa Barbara, Virginia, and Playa Del Rey. We went to Walmart for supplies and five or six grocery carts later we were ready for the lake. It's hard to imagine you can go through a grocery cart of drinks for 13 people and be running low four days later, but we were. There was an immense amount of sugar in those grocery carts as well.

We spend the first night on the houseboat in the boatyard on supports. Since we have power and water from landlines, it's like being in a nice motel in which you have an ownership interest, or like a boat that's run aground and you're pretending otherwise. The next day they pull you to the lake and put you in and you cruise up the lake with the powerboat being towed behind. Standing at the wheel as you move, you feel like you are on a small cruise ship, or the African Queen.

The first night this year we spent in Padre Bay. We put in four anchors to make sure if a wind came up we would be held fast to the beach. We don't just put them out, we dig a hole, we pound them in with a sledgehammer, and we make sure the anchor lines are properly tight because slack tends to allow the boat to swing in a wind. Well, a wind came up but I knew we were secure until one of the anchors started pulling out at which point all the men went into action in a manner that can only be described as similar to the accelerated animation in an early silent movie. Think Keystone Cops. Except it was blowing and thundering while we did it.

Several nights out we were looking for a new beach and it was getting late. We attempted to anchor in one spot, but the ground was bad for digging anchor holets and the boat was uncomfortably close to rocks. We decided to move to another spot in the fading light, and with great skill we got the boat out and underway, and with less skill we didn't notice a shallow rock on the way and went over it damaging both props. Because we left the earlier spot in a hurry, we left the small boat to pick up one of the anchors and part of the crew. They followed us ten minutes later and crossed the same rock we hit (prop 3). Two days later while reconnoitering for a new beach down the lake, we got to close to a rocky beach and ding we damaged anothe prop on the small boat. It was a record! We had never damaged more than one in a trip and it was a few years since we damaged one.

While sitting on the beach the night we destroyed three props, we had a serious storm but all the anchors held. I question whether they would have in the location we moved from. The same night or the next we discovered a stowaway - a mouse. We put out some traps and in a short time we caught the mouse, except his brother showed up elsewhere after he was caught. We caught the brother, then his cousin showed up and we caught him. Then his uncle wandered out and we caught him. We sent five of them off to the great beyond before we were done. Incidentally, peanut butter works just fine in mousetraps.

At the end of the week, we arrived back at the landing having survived/enjoyed another week of houseboating on Lake Powell.