Hot, hot, hot

Trip #2 of 3 is complete.  I spent Tuesday through Saturday of last week at Lake Powell.

The daily high temperatures were around 105 degrees.  It was WAY too hot.  Good thing there's a great big lake to play in.  That's the only way to keep cool.

I went with the Venturers and Explorers in my Ward (one of whom is my older son) and we really had a good time.  Fifteen young men spent quite a lot of time together, and I was amazed at how well-behaved they all were.  There was minimal bickering or teasing the whole time.  It was a great group of young men.

We fished, wake boarded/waterskiied/tubed, swam, hiked (swiked?) ate lots of good food, and generally had a great time.

We were woken by a pack of coyotes pretty much every night.  I think they smelled our food.  It sounded like quite a few, but that was partially due to their barks and cries echoing off of the sandstone cliffs around our camp site.

Lessons learned during the week:

• When you crash, let go of the rope.
• When swimming through narrow canyons full of water covered with an inch of muck, watch out for what you can't see below.  Unseen rocks still cause scrapes and bruises.
• A five-gallon bucket with a toilet seat lid is better than no facilities at all... barely.
• Bodies skip across the water at high speeds much like stones.
• Fifteen adolescents with no shower become rather stinky.
• Old sunscreen quickly becomes water soluble.
• Coyotes are NOISY buggers.
• Your body adjusts to heat, but only partly.  105 degrees is HOT when there's no "indoors" to go into.
• 17-year-old young men emptying the aforementioned five-gallon bucket at the marina can be cause for hilarity.

It's good to be back in the civilized world of porcelain, and central air conditioning.