I am the master of my fate. The captain of my soul.: July 2008

I wish I had been able to blog following Lake Powell. So much detail is now lost in my memory. It was such an awesome trip but it didn't start out that way! Tom and I left late afternoon hauling the trailer with jet ski in tow. Four hours into our drive, while I was passing a huge semi at 80 mph, we hit an overpass and the trailer came off the truck. Let me tell you, it takes a long time to go from 80 to zero when your life is flashing in front of you. Good thing I knew to allow the truck to slow down on it's own and just try to keep us on the road. I realized that looking in the rear view mirror was not going to help me since watching the sparks and the trailer flying all over the place just freaked me out even more. How sweet it was when I could finally pull us off the road. FYI ~ make sure the nut holding your ball on is very, very tight. Better yet, buy a locking nut! Ours had vibrated off and the bump pulled the ball right out of the hole. Lucky for us, there was no damage and we were nine miles from a small town. I limped us into town where we had to spend the night until ACE Hardware opened in the morning. The rest of the driving was me with white knuckles and glancing every second or two in the rear view mirror. That is a lot of white knuckle for 21 hours of driving one way!!! Thankfully the rest of the trip went off without any problems. So much of the dynamics have changed since the kids were small. Kevin is now the Captain in charge of the houseboat. He did an excellent job. Never once did he come close to hitting anything which is amazing when you see the size of the boat and as close as you must get when departing and arriving into the marina slip, marina, gas station or just parking for the night. Lake Powell is as beautiful as I remember. It was hot during the day so you get in the water as much as possible ~ dogs included :) Napping seemed to be big on the trip since we were all up pretty late at night. Nobody had a chance to lose a pound with all the great cooking. Kevin barbecued up some fantastic ribs one night and Dad made his dutch oven surprise with the special seasoning. The nights cooled off and the stars were gorgeous. Dad and I set up fishing poles but didn't catch anything worth talking about or writing about. We all had fun on the jet ski's but Tom, Kevin and Mardie became jet ski crazy. April taught Izzy to fetch in the water. Izzy was diving into the water in no time at all. It was a very good time and we did a lot of laughing and relaxing. Isn't that what vacations are all about????

The captains of our trip!!