Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

(Note: I forgot to mention the science outing on Day 3 when I originally posted it.  You may want to go back and read about our ant war experiment.)

We felt well rested after a nice night of sleep in our tent.  We started the day with a slightly longer hike, climbing all the way to the top of the plateau, well, I did.  It was a bit treacherous just below the summit, so I left Debi there and climbed to the top.  It was perfectly flat and covered with brush.

My Dad came prepared to build just about anything, but one thing he had in mind was a zip line for the kids.  Lake Powell has plenty of cliffs and he thought he could figure out a way to anchor a rope over a stretch of water so the kids could zip into it.  Most of the adults spent about 3 hours working on the zip line.  Turns out, this is a pretty bad idea unless you have a steel cable and a winch.  We stretched the rope over the stretch of water and down to a little island, but had to try to tighten the rope by hand.  My Dad was holding the anchor in place while I cranked on the rope and Debi helped.  I was standing close to the edge of the island, cranking as hard as I could when… the knot I tied gave way and the rope came loose.  I was pulling hard enough to launch me a good five feet into the water.  Debi was right there, watching the whole thing.  She now says that’s her favorite part of the trip: the look on my face as I plunged into the water.  I was fine, of course.  I just surfaced with a doubly-bruised ego - for falling and for my knot coming undone.  As we tried to re-run the rope, it got caught in my brother Danny’s prop twice.  We did pull it taught a second time and actually tried it, but there wasn’t enough tension to even hold a small child.  Three hours, an unexpected plunge into the lake, and two screwed up props later, we scrapped the idea.

If you’re reading this travelogue closely, you’ll remember that one of Debi’s truths from the previous night was that she had never been fishing.  My Dad and brother, along with a couple of nieces and nephews, had worked out a pretty good recipe for the fish off the back of the boat.  There recipe was good enough that you could basically put a baited hook in the water and the fish would fight to bite it.  They weren’t keeping anything, but the nieces and nephews got a kick out of it.  Debi walked back there while they were playing around with them and they gave her the rod.  Two minutes later and she’d caught two fish.  Here she is with the second one:

My brother, Mark, and his wife, Hillari, came early in the morning with my niece, Karlie, and a friend of hers, Missy.  Apparently the year before Mark took the grandkids on a hike and they all liked it.  So, he set up a hike for this year and took pretty much everyone again.  He sent us up the hill to a groovy crater-like formation he found.  We stopped and shot some pictures there (I didn’t, but I’m going to try to get some from my siblings).  We then split up, sending the younger kids down the rock to the boat and the older grandkids and my siblings down a narrow, narrow canyon.  In true Mark fashion, the canyon he sent us down was virtually impossible to climb back up and it ended at about a 20 foot cliff.  The only option: jump.  As an avid hiker, Mark sent me down the canyon first to make sure it was safe.  Safe, mostly.  Easy, definitely not.  But everyone did it and no one got hurt.  We did have to send a lot of stuff over the cliff in backpacks using a rope (we all had shoes, shirts, cameras, etc.), but it worked out in the end.  Here’s the canyon:

I’m getting ready to jump.  Yeah, that guy at the base is me, in my sexy whiteness!  The water is just below the bottom of the picture.  It’s probably a 15 to 20 foot cliff, maybe a little less.  Here are a couple of pics Debi shot (she went down with the kids to make sure they got down safe; she actually really likes jumping off things like this).  This is my sister, Tammy, doing the nose hold jump:

Here’s one of Tammy’s kids, Corbin.  This was just a really good shot by Debi:

I’m floating in the water at the base in case there is a problem.  This next one is my brother Mark, the crazy one who planned the hike:

Here’s a shot of everyone who climbed down the canyon and jumped:

I’m laying in the water.  Behind me from left to right is: Tre (a nephew), then Danny (brother), Tammy (sister), Colleen (sister-in-law, Danny’s wife), Mark (brother), Kristen (sister-in-law), Carson (nephew), Hillari (sister-in-law; Mark’s wife), McKenzie (niece), Corbin (nephew), Karlie (niece), and Missy (Karlie’s friend).  Unfortunately you can’t see Jake (nephew); I’m pretty sure he’s behind Tre.  Don, my brother-in-law (Tammy’s husband), also jumped.  I’m not sure where he is in this picture.

From here we swam to a little beach that Mark dubbed “Cragun” island because someone named “Cragun” had carved his name in the cliff above the island (how Mark found all of this in the 5 hours he was here is beyond me):

We got one last photo of almost everyone on the island:

Debi and I cooked dinner for everyone.  I made peanut pad thai and a broccoli and tofu in peanut sauce.  It was also farely well-received, though some of the kids didn’t dig it.  After dinner we had a talent show, which is a Lake Powell tradition.  It was entertaining.  It was also a calm night, meaning we got a good night of sleep in the tent.

I left off yesterday’s story with Debi and I sleeping on the roof of the houseboat under the canopy hoping the rain wouldn’t be a problem.  As you’ve probably guessed by me telling this story, the rain didn’t ease up.  It got worse, much worse.  We were situated to protect us from the rain from one direction, but it switched in the middle of the night.  The rain poured in from the other direction and even started leaking through the canopy.  Around midnight the water was seeping into our bags.  Around 3:00 am our bags were so wet Debi woke me up and said she’d had enough.  We crawled carefully downstairs and looked around for a place to sleep, but with the grand kids sleeping everywhere and their parents and grandparents (my siblings and parents) in their respective beds, we couldn’t find anything but the hallway, which is a bad idea with 20+ people getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathrooms.  We finally found a location: underneath the kitchen table.  But we didn’t want to wake anyone up, so we weaved our way in-between the chairs and tried to get as comfortable as possible.  It worked enough for us to sleep another couple of hours, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant.  Here are a couple of photos illustrating why we went downstairs.

Tammy and Don are still asleep in this photo.  They were directly under the center of the canopy and built themselves a wall to protect themselves from the rain from one direction.  They still got a little wet, but not too bad.

We were on the two pads perpendicular to Tammy and Don.  This next picture shows just a little of the water we slept in:

We had sleeping bags, but this water accumulated under the sleeping bags.  Here’s a shot of Debi’s sleeping bag the morning after:

We were wet.  Here’s why we slept under the kitchen table:

The kids were laid out all over, leaving us this spot:

Debi slept under these two chairs.

One night under the table convinced us it was time to set up a tent on shore to make sure we didn’t have to do that again.  We set up a tent my parents brought, or at least we tried.  Some of the poles were missing, so, with the help of my Dad, we jury-rigged some poles and got a tent set up.  It worked, at least for a couple of nights (more foreshadowing…).

We also went hiking, snapping a few photos from the cliffs and hills above the houseboat.  Here’s Debi over-looking the canyon where we spent the week.  The houseboat is just to her left:

This was also our day to cook lunch.  We made hummus and cucumber sandwiches, which were generally well-received, though some of the kids didn’t dig them very much.

After lunch, we decided to have science hour with Ryan and Debi.  We tried hard to think of active science stuff that my nieces and nephews would find interesting.  We ultimately decided on studying ants.  I remembered my friend Tom mentioning that he and his brothers would go gather different ant species when they visited his relatives in rural Wyoming and put them into bowls together to watch them fight it out.  We figured we could teach them about ants - how much weight they can carry, how they developed trails to food, how they communicate, etc. - and then let them watch some ants tear each other apart when we were done.  We figured that would keep them entertained.  So, we took the kids up the beach and found three different ant species.  We dropped some food to let them build trails then scooped some up and took them back to the boat.  We put them together and watched to see what would happen.  As it turns out, not much.  There were some minor skirmishes, but it wasn’t the all out ant massacre we expected.  Then one of the kids suggested we drop a lizard in with the ants to see what would happen.  I’d like to say it was true scientific interest, but I think it was more an interest in carnage.  Two of the nephews caught a lizard and dropped it in.  Given the huge size differential, we were all thinking the lizard would stomp the ants to pieces.  Nope.  The ants teamed up and went to town on the lizard.  Debi couldn’t stand torturing the lizard, so we let everything out after about 30 seconds.  For our first foray into Ant Wars, it was definitely entertaining.  We also talked about different kinds of rocks; McKenzie and Carson, two of the grandkids, studied rocks this past year in school, so they did pretty well classifying them.

We swam a bit and for our evening entertainment played a few games.  I forget the first one, but I suggested one game - two truths and a lie.  A lot of people had very good truths and lies, and many were revealing.  Here are mine:

• I’ve seen someone shot.
• I love my wife.
• I’ve seen someone killed.

Any guesses as to which is the lie?

Here are Debi’s:

• I’ve never been fishing.
• I’m pregnant.
• I ran around a parking lot in high school without my shirt on.

Again, feel free to guess which is the lie.

After the two truths and a lie game, Danny, one of my older brothers, taught us a game he played in college.  Basically you bring people into a room one at a time and have them kneel under a blanket.  You then tell them, “You are in a desert and can remove one thing on you that will help you cool down.  We (those outside the blanket) know which item you need to remove that will help you cool down.  You need to remove that item and hand it to us.  When you hand it to us, we’ll let you know if it is the correct item.”  We played the game using the older nieces and nephews and most of them figured out pretty quickly that the correct item is the blanket (a few handed out their shirts first).  Then Danny put his 2 year-old under the blanket and told him to take something off (all he was wearing was his diaper).  Hilariously, Connor took off his diaper and smiled and laughed when he handed it out to Danny.  It was awesome!

After the night activities wrapped up, we headed out to our franken-tent.  We spent about 20 minutes wondering if someone was messing with us as we heard a lot of sounds that sounded like there was someone outside the tent.  Turns out it was just our franken-tent rubbing against itself.  Once we realized it, we finally got a good night of sleep.

This was a relatively calm day.  I went out on one of the ski boats with my brother and some of the grandkids and rode the tube with Trey, my nephew.  We also pulled out another nephew’s XBox 360 (Corbin’s) and started playing the hit game of the trip - Guitar Hero.  I’m not sure I would ever buy it, but it’s actually much more fun than I thought it would be.

The rest of the day was pretty casual, until evening rolled around.  The wind started picking up in the evening and then it started to drizzle lightly.  The kids watched a movie down in the main room while the adults shored up everything outside the boat.  They all eventually fell asleep where they were, taking up all of the main room.  With just a light drizzle up top, we didn’t think it would be much of a problem if we slept up on the top of the boat under the covered section.  My sister, Tammy, and her husband, Don, decided to do the same, as did my sister-in-law, Kristen.  We all set up underneath the canopy on the roof of the houseboat and settled in for the night.  Slowly, the rain picked up and… (continued in next post)

We flew into Utah on July 30th.  We spent the 31st just getting settled and hanging out with family (we went out to eat with my sister, Wendy, and her husband, Mario, and son, Ethan, before they moved to Purdue for graduate school).  I then left for New Mexico early on August 1st for my annual hike with Mark Woolley and Tom Triplett.  You can read about the trip here.  I got back early August 3rd and tried to recuperate before we headed out the next morning for Lake Powell.

My parents picked us up early on the 4th and we met up with my other siblings headed to Lake Powell in American Fork.  We arrived at Lake Powell early in the afternoon, launched and found a beach a little down the river to set up camp.  Everything seemed to go well with no problems the first day.  Apparently the old boat my brother and father had a 1/2 share in (giving them 1 week on it a year) sunk a couple years ago (it was called the Red Sands).  The new boat is bigger and nicer.  Here are a couple of pics of the inside and outside.  This is the new boat where we put in:

The new boat is called the Red Sands 2 (original, huh?). Here’s a shot of the top of the houseboat:

Here’s the main living area, kitchen, and dining room (that’s my brother, Mike, and his son, Broc, in the picture):

Here’s a shot from the back of the boat looking through the hallway:

We watched a movie on the top of the boat using my brother’s projector and a projection screen for entertainment the first night.  It went well, for the most part, until the wind picked up, which was foreshadowing of what was to come the rest of the week.

Here’s a shot of Debi swimming off the back of the boat after we put in and got settled:

And here’s a shot from the back of the boat:

We slept on the roof of the boat under the stars.  It was one of the most calm arrival days at Lake Powell that I remember.

We spent the weekend in Jacksonville, FL visiting with a colleague.  On the way there on Friday we stopped by Mt. Dora, Florida, a cute little hamlet north of Orlando.  It was recommended in a little travel book our neighbor gave us.  It does have a small, resort town feel with lots of cute shops and a nice lake.  We ate lunch at 5th Avenue Cafe, which was good, then stopped by the lake to snap a few shots.  The first one is of Debi by the lake.  The next one is Ryan by the famous lighthouse on the lake.

It’s a cute place and supposedly great for the sunsets over the lake.  Maybe we’ll stop by again some time.

We went to dinner that night at the Jacksonville Landing.  According to my colleague, the Landing is the city of Jacksonville’s attempt to bring people downtown.  However, because it is frequented by minorities along with whites, it has a hard time drawing wealth white suburbanites in.  Racism is alive and well in the US.  There was certainly a mixture of races and ethnicities when we went.  We had dinner at Vito’s Italian Cafe.  It was good, but not remarkable.

On Saturday we drove down the coast to St. Augustine.  We drove through Ponte Verda, which is filled with enormous homes (stratification is alive and well today too).  We also stopped in Guana River State Park to check out the pristine vegetation and beach.  It is really beautiful.  Here’s Debi by the beach at a lookout.

We then spent the afternoon cruising around St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is the nation’s oldest city.  It has a bunch of side streets filled with shops and restaurants.  It is also the home to Flagler University, which is housed in a very cool old hotel.  There are also a bunch of cool art galleries, some of which had artwork that was really cool.  It’s a bit touristy, but definitely a place worth visiting, especially if you like window shopping and pretending like you have enough money to buy original artwork.

Here’s a picture of Flagler University:

On our way back to Tampa we drove through Palatka, the home town of one of the other professors at the University of Tampa.  He talks about it all the time, describing it as a bit backwater-ish (okay, the way he describes it I thought it was going to be a rednecks only zone).  It wasn’t nearly as backwater-ish as I thought it was going to be, but it certainly has its moments.  We ate lunch at Angel’s Diner, which claims to be the oldest diner in the US.  It’s definitely unique.  The diner looks to be in an old, converted rail car.  It’s a bit “greasy” inside, but the wait staff were friendly enough and helped us pick out some nifty local food.  Debi got a grilled cheese sandwich and onion rings.  I went with an actual burger just to get the authentic experience.  Strangely, it tasted just like the burgers I used to eat in Morgan, UT.  The food was a bit greasy and probably took a few years off our lives, but it was tolerable.  Here we are at the diner:

And here’s Debi outside:

It was a good start to our travels in Palatka.  We drove through town and past our friend’s house where he grew up.  It really isn’t that bad of a place, but I couldn’t believe my eyes at one point.  We were driving around town when I spotted what looked like an overgrown junkyard.  It was pretty overrun and I thought it was strange to have such an eyesore in the middle of a relatively nice town.  Then we got closer and I realized it was a cemetery.  The light areas in the photo are tombstones.

We happened to be chatting with our friend as we drove past and we asked him about it.  Turns out, and this blew my mind, it’s the black cemetery.  Just a few blocks away is a nice, normal cemetery that is well kept.  Turns out that is the white cemetery.  A reflection of racial stratification?!?

Our friend suggested we swing by Ravine Gardens State Park while there.  It’s a very cool park surrounding a cool ravine that has been left wild in some areas and is formally gardened in others.  It’s very beautiful and was a cool place to visit.

Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to hike around, but if we find ourselves back there we definitely will take the time to do so.  There are a lot of hiking paths that would be fun to explore.

Overall, it was a fun trip.  We got to see a lot of Florida, but there’s still a lot more to see.