Favorite Photo Friday: Lake Powell

August 1995

Lake Powell was a fairly regular vacation destination for Bryan's family when he was growing up. A time share on a house boat made for a pretty comfortable home base while spending all day out on the lake. I joined the family Powell trip three times and all three were pretty momentous occasions...at least for me.

The first time was when I was just 16 years old. Bryan and each of his siblings were allowed to invite one friend on the trip that summer. Bryan invited me. Miraculously, my parents said I could go! And we had such an amazing time! I'd never been to Lake Powell....never done a trip of this kind. And to be with Bryan 24/7? Yeah, I was pretty much in heaven. But my parents regretted it a few months down the road. :) Not because of anything inappropriate. Would you believe that Bryan only kissed me once that whole week? We were SO good! But my dad was bishop at the time. And all the youth in our ward knew of this trip. Which led to them using me as an example/excuse when trying to convince their parents to let them do things. "Well, the bishop let his daughter go to Lake Powell with a boy! Why won't you let me do (fill in the blank)?"

My second trip to Powell with Bryan's family was two days after we had returned from our honeymoon. Umm....yeah. Can you say NEWLYWEDS?? On a houseboat with not only Bryan's immediate family but a whole slew of his aunts, uncles and cousins. They tried to give us as much privacy as they could.....
It was on this trip that I realized rattlesnakes frequent the area. I hate rattlesnakes. I hate snakes holding any name, description or size. One evening I was walking on the beach just behind my father-in-law, Lynn, and Bryan's Uncle Brent when Lynn stopped abruptly. "Brent!" he said, "Don't move! There is a rattlesnake right by your foot!" I didn't even wait to see the darn thing...I turned and started high-tailing it back to the boat. Lynn called for me to bring him a shovel. I waffled. He could tell. "Sarah!!! GET! THE! SHOVEL!!!" I was scared out of my mind but I grabbed the shovel and then, without getting too close, pretty much threw it to him. I heard the whack of the shovel cutting off the snake's head as I was running back onto the boat. And after that I never went exploring into the sagebrush past the beach, I never even stepped foot off the boat after the evening started cooling down. Yep. You can call me a first-class chicken.
It was also on this trip that I almost became a widow after only a week and a half of marriage. It was the end of the week's trip and we were bringing the houseboat up to the dock to either clean out the septic tank or gas up the boat for the next residents. Whichever, we were trying to pull up to the side of a long dock and it was proving difficult. All hands, either from on the dock or from along side the deck, were trying to help. Bryan, reaching far over the deck near the back, lost his balance and fell overboard...right in-between the boat and the dock. With some sort of herculean strength and speed, his Aunt Janice reached down and pulled Bryan out of the water just as the back end of the boat smashed HARD against the dock right where he had been. Even half a second later and Bryan would've been caught between the two. Bless Aunt Janice!!!

This Favorite Photo Friday picture is my third and last trip to Lake Powell on "The Floating Carp" as we fondly nicknamed the house boat. The trip was great amounts of fun. Lots of swimming, jetskiing, lemonade, sleeping under the stars, reading, card playing, relaxing. But what I remember most about the trip was the life changing events we came home to that next week. The day after we returned home we moved into our new house (our FIRST house) in Magna that we had been anxiously and excitedly watching construction on all spring and summer. A few days later, I found out I was pregnant with Rebekah. After a year and a half of trying, this was HUGE! And the day after that momentous news, Bryan got a new job....one that allowed me to quit my job so I could just focus on my pregnancy and finish up school at the U of U. So I laugh when I look at this picture. We look (well, besides dirty and really young...) relaxed and ignorant to the huge, life changing events coming our way just a few days later.