The Good Life on Lake Mead

BY: Marilyn Taylor

Take four Indian summer days, gather up family and friends, load three boats full of food and water toys, and go have fun.

LAKE MEAD

The Voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers Vin Scully pounces out of the radio into our camp all the way from Toronto. A campfire warms our legs; a spot of deep red wine helps settle a meal of homemade topsirloin-chunked chili; our tired but happy kids roast marshmallows. Above us there's a clear, star-sprayed black sky. Around us, no mosquitoes, no gnats, nobody for miles. It was a tough assignment. Take four Indian summer days away from routine life, gather up family and close friends, load three big boats full of great food and water toys, and go have fun at Lake Mead. It was a trip full of promise. We looked forward to a scheduled meteor shower caused by the lingering swoosh of Halley's Comet; warm days and cool, blanket-hugging nights; and 1993 World Series broadcasts by one of baseball's greatest-ever announcers. The promises were fulfilled, and there was even more: sky-diving spiders, a halfmoon on fire, fresh sautéed striper, a captain's helm view of one of the world's most spectacular dams, a lazy champagne-breakfast boat cruise. If you ask any of the dozen of us who made the Lake Mead trip to rate it among our many outdoor treks, the answer would be a "10."

The planning for our trip began in August around my dining room table, which was covered with maps and information about the many ways to "do" Lake Mead. For many of us, this would be our first trip to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Twice the size of Rhode Island, the national park is 3,000 square miles of recreational area, anchored by one of the world's largest dams: Hoover. The area, edged into the Black Mountains on the ArizonaNevada border, contains 110-mile-long Lake Mead, 67-mile-long Lake Mohave, nine developed camp areas, nine marinas, six motels, and scores of restaurants and concessions. Avid campers, we quickly eliminated the motel-type trip and, all of us favoring boating for Lake Mead, decided against an incountry hiking and backpacking trek. We learned from the National Park Service that we wouldn't be allowed to moor our boats in the water near any of the established campsites. That narrowed even further our choices about the shape our trip would take. Whenever most of us camp by water, we sleep on our boats. We settled on "boat camping." Boat camping can be tricky because you have to make sure that everything you need for the trip for our families, that's tons will fit on the boats. The drill goes like this: we drive to a marina and load everything

LAKE MEAD

From our vehicles onto the boats kids (there's always a bunch), wind surfers, stoves, lanterns, ice chests, kitchen boxes, tarp shades and poles, water skis, life jackets, everything. Then we launch the boats and dash off in search of a primitive (undeveloped) shoreline campsite.

On the advice of photographer Patrick Cone, we decided to find a spot between Boulder Basin on the west side of Lake Mead and Temple Bar to the east. By map, the most promising spot looked like Sandy Cove, just east of Callville Bay and ahead of the Boulder Canyon narrows that widen into Virgin Basin, Overton Arm, and Temple Bay.

On Thursday morning, after a six-hour drive northwest from Phoenix, we arrived at Lake Mead Resort Marina. The marina was deserted, so launching went quickly and smoothly. We sped out toward Sandy Cove, about 12 miles northeast.

In 20 minutes, we shut down the motors and drifted, wakeless, into the mouth of Sandy Cove and toward the kind of boatcamping site we see only in our dreams. The sandy lake bottom was clear and rockless. The shore site was a clean white sandy beach just below black lava cliffs and bounded on all sides by feathery tamarisks. As if it wasn't perfect enough, in the middle of the beach was a big neatly bundled stack of firewood, apparently left by the site's previous visitors.

Thereafter the days and nights were filled with waterskiing, windsurfing, fishing, side trips to marinas, swimming, snorkeling, cooking, eating, reading (the adults got hold of my daughter's Mad magazines), and what I call bragging-complaining. Bragcomplain is what men do when they talk about their boats. In the same breath, they say their boats are the best on water and the worst, most expensive thing that ever came their way. A real delight during the trip was snorkeling. Unlike most Arizona lake waters I've swum in, Mead is clear and unmuddied.

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 14 AND 15) The sun rises over Sandy Cove at Lake Mead, the 110-mile-long jewel of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Each year several million boaters, water-skiers, fishermen, hikers, and sightseers flock to the vacation mecca, which also encompasses the smaller Lake Mohave.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Viewed from inside a tent set up on one of the lake's many sandy beaches, a boat hovers near shore.

(ABOVE) The clear waters of Lake Mead are perfect for snorkeling, as T.K. discovers, and even in deeper parts, you can see all the way to the lake bottom.

The waters are turquoise and dark blue, and you can see the lake's lush bottom from the surface in the coves and far out from the shoreline.

The waters around Sandy Cove were cool and tinged with drifts of warm currents. Changing colors with the rising and setting sun from green to turquoise to gold to dark blue, the cove was a veritable lagoon. In the afternoons, Chuck Mosher, T.K. Newman, Chick Laughead, and I donned life jackets and passed around the snorkeling gear.

After we got underway, we were directed to the buffet and served cheese omelets with salsa, scrambled eggs, O'Brien potatoes, sausage, biscuits with gravy, muffins, croissants, donuts, and other pastries.

The water was shallow three to four feet for quite a distance off the shoreline. Then, marked by a distinct change in color from turquoise to midnight blue, there was a drop into deeper waters, and, swimming above and wearing the snorkeling mask, you could still see the lake bottom. Pulled by boat captains Buz Fleming and Bob Newman, the water-skiers among us took to the lake, usually in the afternoon when the waters calmed. And Fleming, a skilled wind-surfer, would head out later in the afternoon when the evening breezes picked up and fueled his sail.

Then there was fishing. Beginning the first day of our trip, each afternoon just ahead of twilight and every morning at sunrise, bass-boat owner Stan Newman and his friend, teacher Wayne Montieth, headed out to fish. Their hours-long trips took them to tiny coves around Beacon Island, along the Boulder Canyon narrows, and into Virgin Basin waters.

Mercilessly ribbing them about their lack of skill each time they returned with zilch, we were just about to give up on Stan and Wayne when, the last night, they brought back a four-pound striper.

While Stan fileted it, I melted butter in a fry pan and sautéed Spanish onions, sweet red pepper, and cilantro. We sliced the filets; seasoned them with cracked black pepper, fresh lime juice, and salt; stir-fried them with the vegetables; and served them as appetizers with English water crackers.

No one made fun of Stan and Wayne after that.

Our daily marina side visits included several jaunts to the Lake Mead Resort Marina and one on Friday afternoon to Tem-ple Bar Marina, just west of Virgin Canyon and below Greg Basin. After ordering ice cream for the kids at the restaurant-bar, buying votives at the marina store for our candle-lit dinner that evening, and gassing on linen-covered tables as well as close-up views of Hoover Dam.

up the boats at the marina dock, we head-ed back to the campsite.

That's when we came upon the canyon of the sky-diving spiders.

The ride back was unusually choppy due to strong head winds, but the waters calmed as we headed west from Virgin Basin into the Boulder Canyon narrows that open to Sandy Cove in Boulder Basin.

The waters of the narrows are bounded by sheer black lava cliffs. We motored between the faces, and, peering up at the cliffs, my eyes caught fine flashing gold streaks that stretched from the tops of the cliffs down to the water.

We slowed the boat to get a better look.

They were single-strand spider webs that shimmered in the shifting gold light of the afternoon sun. Photographer Cone, who spent part of his boyhood in Boulder City near Mead, told us the webs were spun by spiders and used by them to "sky-dive" from cliff to cliff.

The delicacy of that and the sheer loveliness of the glinting silky threads is a lingering wonder to me.

Another wonder this one huge and man-made was Hoover Dam. At 726 feet, it is the tallest concrete dam in the Western Hemisphere. It was constructed during the Great Depression, and 96 workers died building it, although none of their bodies are sealed in the concrete, as legend has it.

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We saw it in style. On Saturday all 12 of us embarked on a champagne-breakfast cruise aboard the Desert Princess, a threedeck paddle-wheeler operated by Lake Mead Cruises, out of Lake Mead Resort Marina. Having made reservations in advance for the two-hour cruise, we boarded at 9 A.M. and were shown to our own linencovered breakfast table.

After we got underway, we were directed, table by table, to the buffet and served cheese omelets with salsa, fluffy scrambled eggs, O'Brien potatoes, bacon, sausage, biscuits with gravy, muffins, croissants, donuts, and other pastries. Coffee, orange juice, and champagne were poured table-side.

After breakfast our kids were invited to take the helm with Captain Jeff Smith and help him guide the Desert Princess to Hoover Dam and back. In real life, Smith is an Air Force sergeant stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. He specializes in sea crash and rescue searches. While he is stationed in the desert, he said, the Princess helps him keep up his mandatory boating hours.

Arriving at our massive destination, Smith gave the Princess' foghorn a deafening blast, which echoed off the lake's canyon walls. Then, the dam before us, he presented the facts and cleared up the myths relating to the construction and operation of Hoover.

Another wonder I witnessed alone and by sheer luck. About 3 A.M., Sunday, the waters got so choppy that the boat's rocking awakened me. I like to sleep on a slipout bed at the aft of the boat, so I can see the stars at night as I fall asleep.

A strange light in the western sky caught my eye, and I sat up. Halved and on the wane, the moon was fiery fluorescent orange like molten lava. It seemed to be fighting its descent as it was drawn down behind a black mountaintop. I watched it disappear and then lay back down.

The waters calmed, and the sky was blacker. I scanned it in search of tiny satellites you can spy, if you're patient, speeding through the universe. I caught a streak out of the corner of my eye and saw a vapor trail. Then, above me, another streak and another. The sky became a theater of shooting stars, darting in every direction, some of them so hot and close, they left fiery blue tails. In the span of about 20 minutes, I counted 17 meteors. I was hoping this would happen. I listen to "Star Date," a public radio astronomy brief produced by the University of Texas at Austin. Before I left, I heard a broadcast that promised a meteor shower caused by debris left behind by Halley's Comet. Called the Orionid Meteor Shower, it occurs each year, and it's especially visible if you're under dark skies outside urban areas. I felt lucky. Seventeen wishes granted in less than a half hour.

Don't think the trip was without incident. Bob Newman blew the power-steering hose out of Best Datch Yet, his yellow high-performance Silhouette. And Stan Newman's bass boat had a fuel-line problem.

But I've come to believe the reason men buy boats is to have something to fix, so I don't think of this sort of thing as a problem. Broken boats are part of a man's fun.

For me, like I said, it was a tough assignment. Around the campfire, our bare feet dug into the warm sand, gazing at the stars. The bottom of the ninth; Blue Jay Joe Carter steps up and whacks a three-run homer. Scully tells us good night in a voice like no one else's in the world, and we lift our plastic wine glasses in a toast to Toronto and the sweet goodness of life.

Tough. But, hey, somebody has to do it.

WHEN YOU GO

The Lake Mead Recreation Area is in one of Arizona's hottest desert locales: the northwestern region bordering Nevada. Little more than 1,100 feet above sea level, Lake Mead reaches summer temperatures that can top 125° F. Average temperatures for summer months are between 104° F. and 111° F. If you go in summer, take plenty of water, shading, and sunscreen. In September and October, average daytime temperatures are a more comfortable 99° F. and 88° F., respectively.

The recreational area is approximately 280 miles northwest of Phoenix via U.S. 60-93. The lake is a boater's paradise, with plenty of room for waterskiing, jetskiing, windsurfing, houseboating, scuba diving, fishing, and power boating. There also are many wonderful sandy beaches and hidden coves for camping and swimming. If you don't own your own boat, or want to rent a houseboat to tow your fishing or ski boat for an extended stay on the lake, there are marinas on both the Arizona and Nevada sides of Lake Mead. Consult a map because there are several routes depending on sites and towns you want to visit along the way.

First-time visitors to Lake Mead should stop at the Alan Bible Visitor Center at Boulder City, Nevada, to get an introduction to the area; discuss backcountry boating, hiking, and camping with the rangers; and buy guidebooks and nautical and topographic maps of the region.

For more information, write or call the visitor center at 601 Nevada Hwy., Boulder City, NV 89005-2426; (702) 293-8906. For information about weather conditions and boating and camping facilities, call the National Park Service's Lake Mead Recreation Area office at (702) 293-8906. For information about rentals and marina facilities, call Lake Mead Resort Marina, (702) 293-3484. To make reservations for a Desert Princess scenic lake cruise, call (702) 293-6180. For Hoover Dam tour information, call (702) 293-8367.