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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
431 Flaming Gorge
Some 91 miles long, stretching from Wyoming into Utah is one of the most beautiful places in the Rocky Mountains.
Flaming Gorge is a huge canyon that was named by explorer John Wesley Powell, for whom the Wyoming town of Powell is also named. Powell explored the Green River from present-day Green River and named Flaming Gorge for the huge red cliffs that dominate much of its lower portion.
Summer in Wyoming is time for people to get out and see unusual places in their state. The annual pilgrimage of thousands of rodeo fans to Cheyenne is occurring right now during the annual Frontier Days celebration, for example.
Our state is full of amazing places such as Curt Gowdy State Park, the South Pass City Historical Site, Thermopolis Hot Springs and Shell Canyon outside of Greybull.
The state parks system offers cool getaways with seven of the parks located around major water reservoirs and four along scenic rivers.
There are national sites like the Oregon Trail, Devil’s Tower, huge national forests and my newest favorite locale - Flaming Gorge.
Focus of this column is the Gorge. This national recreation area only came into being in 1968, just ten years after its dam was started construction. The lake is huge with depths near 500 feet in places.
My boat is a little 18-foot runabout. My wife wants to name it Bad News, because it travels fast. I am not so sure and frankly, I don’t think it goes that fast.
We have enjoyed seeing the names on other boats such as: Doc of the Bay, Honey’s Money, Mai Tai Thing, The Good Life, Heaven Can Wait, Twisted Sister, Fun Nominal, Reel Time, Winning Hand, Incognito, Windy Anchors, My Children’s Inheritance, Fagowee, Dam Fool, Piano, Paper Boy, Gorge Us, Just Us and Partyless.
The whole idea of naming a boat creates lots of ideas. Like the list above who are these people? Just Us could very well be a judge or a lawyer? Paper Boy could be a newspaper publisher? Doc of the Bay could very well be a doctor? Maybe my wife is right. We could name my boat Bad News.
From Forbes FYI Magazine, is an article about various flags that can be flown from such boats. The article by humorist Chris Buckley and Patrick Cooke listed some flags for boats:
• I am a trial lawyer. Please collide with me.
• I cannot afford this vessel.
• I am a Democrat and feel guilty about owning this big boat.
• I am a Republican. You should see my other boat.
• My vessel cost more than yours.
• I am on fire and have dangerous cargo on board, and frankly it is not much fun.
• I am defibrillating. Stand clear.
One of the nicer boats docked on Flaming Gorge belongs to the successful trial lawyer Ford Bussart of Green River. I wonder if he is flying any of the above flags?
Whenever I am on the lake, I suffer some serious boat envy. These monster 30-footers go buzzing by. They are self-contained with bedrooms and bathrooms (I mean heads) onboard.
People can anchor these brutes in any of scores of wonderful little coves and live the great life.
If you want, you can also rent houseboats there. Now this looks like a lot of fun. This huge boat can host a small army and tow a small boat like mine behind as it trolls on down the lake like a Mississippi River barge. They even have slides for kids to zoom down into the water. They have all the amenities.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s first brief vacation was on one of these houseboats, I think. He said it was a hoot.
On our last trip to Flaming Gorge, we were enjoying one of the southernmost canyons in the lake and not paying attention to the weather.. Suddenly a boat went roaring by and it looked like the guy was waving at us. Upon closer scrutiny, he was pointing to the sky.
We looked up and it was suddenly getting ominous and dark.
It took awhile to motor back to the Lucerne Valley Marina as we traveled through rain, dodged lightning and fought whitecaps to get back to a slip.
We had two boats in our group and ironically, both marine radios went dead at the same time from expired batteries. So we could no longer communicate with each other or check the weather.
An armada of boats was heading north out of the canyons and back to the marina during this experience, which made me thankful for that friendly guy who was pointing at the incoming storms.
After sitting out the three-hour deluge, the weather became calm again and the boats again hit the high seas. That evening was one of the best ever on the lake as the water was positively glass-like.
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