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After 3 weeks of working my butt off remodeling the house, I treated myself to a day at the lake with some friends. It’s the perfect time of year in Arizona because it’s warm enough to want to go swimming and the lakes are cool and refreshing. On the way to the lake, we passed by a chopped Chrysler 300 near downtown Tempe. I scoured the Internet and found a crude photo. Even though it’s not the most flattering shot, you can see that the car is pretty sweet.

Sweet.

We went to the lake to ski, but I spent most of my time admiring the scenary. Here are a few photos from the afternoon.

That’s Four Peaks in the distance, made infamous by our license plates and a brewery.

Candyce enjoying the sun.

Danny (striking a pose), Lauryn (confused), and Candyce (confident)

Grillin’ and Chillin’

Most of the day on the lake was serene, but the final hours was nothing but surreal. We finished skiing and pulled up to a sandy beach to grill some dinner. There were a half-dozen other boats there, each the main stage of a their own little spring break in September. Big speakers on their boats echoed “Party Like a Rokkstar” around the canyon walls. Males were drinking, yelling, and insulting each other. Females were strutting around in their bikinis showing off their new tattoos. It was a bizarre scene in the middle of the desert. I lit the grill and started cooking. One by one, they backed off the beach and cruised out of the cove. The last boat left leaving a trail of music bouncing through the canyon: Will.i.iam’s “I Got it from my Mama.” Then all we heard were birds and bugs at dusk. Humans really are an unruly species.

Rock the Boat

Before I move on, I should explain that Saguaro lake is the fourth and lowest lake in a series of four. Roosevelt feeds into Apache, Apache into Canyon, and Canyon into Saguaro.

I was flipping the chicken when our placid lake began to ripple with a strong current. This is bizarre, because lakes don’t “ripple with a srong current.” We were all staring into the distance trying to make sense of this, when I looked down and saw a pair of flip flops (left by a party girl) float off the sand and into the water. Within minutes our sandy beach had become smaller than my kitchen.

We hopped up onto the boat and ate dinner and listened to Jason describe his plan for sailing from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. Before we knew it, it was dark and it was time to go. Unfortunately, the water level had lowered, and our boat was a beached whale. The guys got out and rocked the boat for ten minutes until we were finally floating again. It was a funny scene because the girls were in the boat and it looked like we were harrassing them I read in the paper earlier this week that they were lowered the water level in Canyon Lake by 20 feet to repair the dam. They opened up their dam upstream and flooded our picnic.

The cruise out of the lake was magical. It was dark and we were the only boat still on the lake. You couldn’t see the canyon walls, so we had to drive slowly. The sky was illuminated by a full dome of stars. It’s been so long since I’ve seen so many stars like that.

We stopped for twenty minutes and just floated in darkness, staring up the the sky. In the distance a camper was staying warm by a fire of mesquite wood, filling the air with the smell of autumn. It was such a calm moment at the end of such a severe three weeks of remodeling.