Lake Powell... and a series of unfortunate events...

4. Go on a killer Lake Powell trip! (Trevor &I have wanted to do this since we first met)

So remember #4 on my 25 before 25 list? Ever since Trevor and I met we have talked about going on a fun Lake Powell trip with our friends! We have talked about it, and talked about it, and finally decided we were in a situation to finally do it! 

We spent a lot of time and money planning our trip to Lake Powell. We were so excited to spend this time with our friends. To add to the excitement, this was my first time at Powell and I couldn't wait! I have always heard amazing things about it. I drove down to St. George to meet Trevor and the next morning we were going to wake up and drive to Powell. Trevor's friends were driving down that same night but were going to go all the way through to Powell. 

When I got to St. George Trevor was on the phone with one of our friends. The lady we rented our boat from was being extremely difficult to work with. I could go into that whole story but I will spare you and leave it at she does not have good customer service and it took us hours to figure that whole thing out. We almost didn't even have a boat for our trip. Finally Trevor was off the phone and we wanted to get to bed before our early start the next day. Then we received a phone call. It was Trevor's friends who had been driving down. They had just had a freak car problem, the fan under the hood of his car broke and chopped his radiator hose in half causing fluid to spray all over their windshield and blew the top off. It left them stranded.We were just happy they didn't get in an accident because of it! So at around 1:00 in the morning Trevor had to drive over two hours to pick them up. I kept telling him that even though this had been a horrible night, that in 24 hours we would have all forgotten about it and be enjoying ourselves. 

Trevor went with them to Lake Powell in a different car, and I went by myself the next morning and met them there. Finally, we had all made it to Lake Powell! We could get this party started! We took our time driving the boat to the perfect spot, and setting the house boat up and organizing everything. We still had a good chuck of the day left, so we all started playing in the water and having fun on our house boat. Attached to the top of our house boat was a slide, and on one of the runs down Trevor slipped and fell, getting a huge, deep gash in his leg. It was bad. Really bad.

Trevor tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but I was extremely worried it needed stitches or that it might get infected. Of course we couldn't find any first aid kits on the boat. We had to walk to a neighboring group and ask them if they had any, which thankfully they did. So we wrapped it up and continued on playing while Trevor had to stay out of the water for the rest of the day.

With a few hours of our day left we decide to take the boat out for a run. But the second we got out there it started pouring and we decide to head back in. Once we got back into the house boat a thunder storm starts. The ropes and anchors they gave us to keep the house boat tied down kept pulling up from the sand. It is beyond me why they would give you ropes and anchors that don't hold up in a tiny thunderstorm! So the boys kept having to go in and out re-digging and fixing them. Eventually the storm passed and it cleared up. After being on the house boat so long from the storm, we decided to head out on the boat and not waste the last bit of the day we had.

Chris decided to try some wake surfing and we had started his run, when he fell, a few seconds later there was a big BAM! It lifted me out of my seat, and I remember thinking Stanton (who was driving) must have slammed on the breaks. But why would he slam on the breaks? Next thing I see is Stanton and Preston standing out of the boat... wait what? What are they standing on? We had hit a rock. A HUGE rock! Right in the middle of the lake! A lake that people had been boating on ALL day?!

What was happening?! Our luck had been miserable from the start of the trip and now this? Apparently the water levels have been very low this entire summer in Powell, and rocks like that are usually tagged so people go around them. However, with the water sometimes dropping two inches in just an hour, they can't catch every rock. We just happened to be the first to hit that particular rock that day. We were devastated. We had all been saving our money for this trip and we knew we had just totaled the boat. The very expensive boat. Yes, we had insurance on it,  however, it was a pretty steep deductible, and when you add the cost of paying for the boat and not even using it, we lost a significant amount of money. Which is hard for a bunch of young adults, with student loans etc. to swallow.

However, as we got back into the house boat Trevor was being so positive, and kept trying to remind everyone how lucky we are to have our health and that, that was what was important. When everyone was in a pretty gloomy mood, it made all the difference for me to have someone being so positive about what was a pretty horrible situation. Things could have been much worse and it was a nice to be reminded what really matters. By the next morning everyone felt a little lighter and brighter. We didn't want to let this ruin our entire trip, I mean, we had paid for a house boat for the rest of the week, we may as well enjoy it.

And we did. We were in beautiful Lake Powell, with a great group of friends! We spent the rest of the week cliff jumping, swimming, exploring, and playing games. I am happy our group was able to look for the good, even when it was hard to see it.

When we got back from our trip a few days later there was a news story about a twenty three year old at Lake Powell that had been ejected from his boat that had hit a rock. The boat had ran over him and he was killed. To see this news was very somber. My heart goes out to everyone who knows him, and while it may seem inappropriate to even say so, it made me realize how blessed and lucky we were.

If Chris hadn't fallen when he did, we would have been going at a much faster speed when we hit the rock and not only could that have hurt any passengers in the boat, Chris could have smacked into the back of the boat, or that rock himself. It can be hard to see blessings in bad circumstances, but when you look deep, sometimes you can see how things that were bad could have been much worse, even fatal. Unfortunately it took a tragedy to really have that lesson settle in.

I am thankful for a positive and caring husband, for good friends who can join together when things get difficult, and for hidden blessings. This may have been something as insignificant as crashing a boat, however, life will eventually give us all curve balls. It will give us things much more difficult to deal with, like death. And when those hard times come, which they inevitably will, I want to be that kind of person who looks for the good. Who can be at peace, because I know I have a Heavenly Father who loves me, and that there is a plan. That it will all work out. 

*Nasty side note, Trevor's leg was super infected and he ended up having to be on several antibiotics for a few weeks. The doctor said he should have had stitches. I will spare you the pictures...

*I had originally planned on taking a ton of photos with my nice camera, and making a video, but due to the events didn't end up getting much of either. So I figured I would share this trip via my Instagram!

Before I knew how much worse the trip was going to get! haha :) 

Trevor playing his guitar! Off in the distance you can see our house boat, and the infamous wake boarding boat.

Just before we all went cliff diving!

The boys playing volleyball.

Jessica dared me to take my top off, which led to me skinny dipping, and then Billie followed suit, and before you knew it, there were four women swimming freely in this little cove. No worries people, NO one was in sight! haha :)

Doesn't it look fake? The views killed me.