Our anchorage at Iceberg Canyon was absolutely spectacular.
There was a sand castle on the beach that we imagined was an Anasazi sand castle!
This was also the perfect day on Lake Powell, what we came for! Up early for Baxter duty, no fish jumping here. French toast and fried Spam (!) for breakfast, then to the kayaks for a short paddle up this branch of Iceberg Canyon, and another hike to the bowl at the end, which we climbed up into for a rest. It was an easier hike than the others because most of it was in the shade, and just great scenery. These excursions usually take a few hours, in this case I think we headed out about 9:30 a.m. and were back around 1:30 p.m.
A detour here, some thoughts on photographing Lake Powell. It is at once incredibly simple and impossibly hard. You can get great shots randomly pointing your camera just about anywhere. But to capture the grandeur of the high cliffs right next to you or the bowl you are approaching is extremely difficult. The big things have to be photographed from a good vantage point at the right distance, with the right lens. More often than not, those attempts are disappointing. I have taken to carrying just a pocket camera and trying to take mostly pictures of us, our boats, our kayaks and Baxter and let the scenic background show in the background.
And no day would be complete without a "Baxter Barrett Anderson, Dog of the Desert" shot!
Anyway, when we got back to the boat, we had a wonderful refreshing swim followed by lunch.
After lunch about 3 p.m. or so, it was back to the kayaks to go paddling to a different arm of the canyon. Unlike many other canyons, Iceberg has many arms and some of the arms have arms of their own! This particular arm was dammed near its end by a rock slide in the 1980s, and has great cottonwood trees in the water, which make a great backdrop for kayak pictures!
We took a short walk around the dam to see the lake that had formed behind the dam. The lake was full of carp swimming with their fins breaking the surface. When we returned to the kayaks from the lake, a woman was bare climbing a rock wall and we watched her for a bit. Then back to the boats. We checked the distance by GPS later, and our roundtrip paddle was 2.6 miles! Our little Pelican Pursuit kayaks are perfect for here!
This is such a great spot anchored in our little pool here that we decided to stay a second night rather than pushing on. After drinks and dinner, we were all pretty exhausted from the days activities, so we just we all just star-gazed, Patty, Baxter and I on the bow of Daydream and Russ and Toni on the bow of Traveler.
OUT
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