Lolo in Gunsight CanyonAfter 2 ½ years of living in Sonoma County, we still had one more task before declaring our move complete. The motorhome and Subaru (tow vehicle) had moved first in 2013 to a campground storage facility in Petaluma, Herb drove his motorcycle cross country in May of 2015 to settle in a friend’s barn in Sebastopol (not Herb, but just the motorcycle), and in November of that same year, Herb and I said goodbye to our home of 30 years and made the trek cross country in our Toyota Camry. That left the last of our fleet, a 20-foot Grady White and 1995 Suburban, wondering where had everyone gone? Herb’s brother had been kind enough to offer us a place to store it in his backyard until we got settled and figured things out.

Then in September of 2016, we flew back to New Jersey to pick up the boat and bring it home - or, three quarters of the way at least. Herb loves desert lakes so we brought it as far as Lake Mead in Nevada, camped on it for a few days, and then stored it there - visiting it for a mini-vacation again in October of 2017.

Realizing that keeping a boat a 2-day drive away simply made no sense, I negotiated a plan to bring the boat back home. Herb had always dreamed of camping on our boat in Lake Powell, so despite not being as big a fan as Herb of hot desert weather and sleeping on a small boat for long periods of time, I agreed to do a 7-day camping-on-the-boat trip to Lake Powell, as long as we brought it all the way back to California afterwards.

We really hoped our new Toyota 4Runner, rated as capable of towing 5,000 pounds, would be up to the challenge of towing our 5,000 pound boat over 1,200 miles.

In retrospect, 4th of July week was probably not the best choice, as it is the most crowded week of the year on Lake Powell. Still, as you will read later, because our boat is much smaller than a houseboat, we were able to find secluded places to camp and had an incredible time.