The morning sun turquoise and pink colored water
shimmering like jiggling Jell-O made an early swim seem a good
idea. The exhilaration of the night's wild animal attack made
Durango feel even one with nature. And so he swam with the fish as
one of the school sans any of those human trappings like
swimsuits. Does a Bobcat wear a coat as it skulks into the night?
Does a Fish wear shorts? Durango
thought not and so he swam free
and unencumbered, gliding through the water, free of spirit free
of heart free of clothes without a thought of self-consciousness
regarding his Adam in Big Eden condition, until one of the moronic
Simp Twins ruined the glow of the moment by loudly commenting
that the water is so clear you can see everything,
every little
itsy bitsy thing. Wanda and Lulu laughed. Durango thought they'd
just been watching him swim. He was horrified to realize they'd
been ogling his nether regions. Durango hurried out of the water,
wrapped himself in a towel and climbed to the upper deck to dry in
the warm sun. But Wanda and Lulu, apparently entranced by the Adonis-like
spectacle, followed Durango aboveboard, double-teamed him,
throwing his towel overboard with Durango quickly following.
By midmorning we lifted anchor and were underway
once more. On to Rainbow Bridge. That daunting destination that
only days before Simp Twin Homer lamented at length would be
impossible for us to reach. The boat ride up the main channel of
Lake Powell continued to show scenic surprises to us. Thunder
Mountain Houseboat, like a Disney ride on steroids.
As we turned
left at the Rainbow Bridge buoy and entered Rainbow Canyon the
ride became its most exciting. The walls of the canyon narrowed in
on us. We met boats coming out, passing each other through narrow
passages, the wake bouncing us towards the canyon walls. Pilot Big Ed
remained steady on course. We anticipated Rainbow Bridge at every
twist and turn of the canyon and suddenly there it was, looming
larger than we had expected.
Big Ed practically parallel parked the boat with the
same ease as parking a car on a street. As we secured the boat
Lulu ran ahead to the restrooms.
We had never witnessed Lulu run
at such high speed. Into the restrooms she ran. And then out she
ran. Bad thing bad thing was the Lulu lament. We'd come to know
what that meant. It was a real bad thing. A foul stench like a
hundred Simp Twins with Mega-Flatus. Such an awful abomination
at such a scenic National Monument.
With Lulu now suppressing her natural urges we
marched on toward Rainbow Bridge. Of course when some foreigners
mistook Lulu for a Beauty Queen or Movie
Star she was able to take time to pose for them. Even though on first site it
seemed impressive it somehow was not saying Wonder of the World to
Durango. Perhaps he was negativized by the foul stench of the
toilets. But as we got closer Rainbow Bridge became more
impressive. Eventually Durango decided while he didn't think it
was a Wonder, Rainbow Bridge was definitely a Wow of the World.
After viewing the giant arch from every angle we
traipsed back to the boat to start our float out of Rainbow
Canyon. As we sped out, obeying the speed limit incoming tour
boats not obeying the speed limit causing tidal waves of wakes
that crashed into the houseboat and flooded the floor. It was
fun.
We reached the main channel. The Simp Twins
were determined to find a good fishing spot. They seemed to be
passing one good boat docking site after another. Finally Jack had
had enough and he decided to descend down into the Captain Queeg-like
madness that had become our Pilot Room. Jack returned topside
ready to mutiny, complaining it was impossible to communicate with
the Simp Twins, that they were in some intense pathological
netherworld not accessible to him. Durango decided to go down to
the Pilot Room to see if it was as bad as Jack made it sound. It
was.
Homer yapped non-stop gibberish about things he
was reading on the map working himself into a manic/fever state
trying to match the map to the scenic reality unfolding before
him. Twin Big Ed was being just as wacky, as if their twisted twin
synergy had taken over. Durango was unable to 
break through with
any sort of human communicative contact. And so he returned
topside to announce that the Normals had lost control of the boat
to the Nuts. A discussion of mutiny began, a consensus was reached
that we needed to remove Simp Twin Homer from being part of
the boat guiding process. The twins had to be separated. It was
well remembered that just 36 hours prior Homer had held us all
hostage in the housekeeping unit as he boorishly insisted for over
2 hours that there was no way we could make it all the way to
Rainbow Bridge. It was now scarily apparent to all that there was
a total disconnect between Homer's words and any given day's
reality. Something had to be done. We decided that Homer's
long-suffering wife, Wanda, was the perfect foil for the job.
Wanda was sent down to the boiler room to say how badly she wanted
to stop at a nice place, early, so we could enjoy it. Next Lulu
was sent down to begin preparing her delicious ribs. The food
diversion worked. Once the smell of food cooking filled the cabin
the Simp Twins switched their focus to food. And finally we
were able to force them to listen. At least for awhile.
We soon settled on what became known as Skull
Cove just up the juncture where the San Juan River joins Lake
Powell. As the ribs cooked Durango took off on a hike. He climbed
atop the huge petrified sand dunes. And then onto the next higher
one. Til finally he reached the highest. He was on a pinnacle. He
could see in every direction. A cactus garden blossomed below him.
Durango sat and relaxed. Happy to finally be away from the bizarre
anxiously overwrought production that is any operation shepherded
in any way by the Simp Twins. Durango sat in the lotus
position, a low ommmmms slowly transcended his state of
consciousness til he began to feel a surreal ethereal
contentedness, his chakras were grounding, the orange and the
brown and the red were fairly pulsating and the the purple haze
and the blue glow and the white light and Durango was near bliss
and one with the Universe. He was at peace. He was happy. Durango
sat atop the world for he does now know how long and then he began
to explore once more.
Durango climbed down the opposite side of the
cliffs from where he had ascended. He lowered himself into a
narrow chasm and then up another petrified dune and another
pinnacle and from there he could see the houseboat far below.
Because he had achieved peace of mind Durango was actually happy
to see his fellow travelers. He hollered down at them. They
hollered back. Durango started to head down. They began screaming
at Durango, insulting, distracting angry words that bounced off
the canyon
walls echoing and repeating. The cacophony was scary,
it was annoying, it made Durango nervous. What were they so
excited about he wondered? Durango continued to climb down. The
hollering grew louder. Durango felt in no danger, but feared the
collective negative bellowing was going to infect his spirit with
negative vibes and cause him to have an accident. So, Durango
scurried back up the cliffs and then down to the houseboat the
same way he came. As he returned he felt nothing but contempt for
those namby pamby nimber pussers, til he looked up at the cliff he
had been on when they were hollering. It did appear to be
dangerous from the ground perspective. Durango quickly forgave his
boatmates for yelling at him.
As the night grew darker Durango and Jack went
swimming. It was kind of disgusting because the Simp Twins had
had their first fish kill. Slaughtering it on the back deck. Blood
and guts everywhere. Actually Big Ed caught 
the fish. As usual
Homer seemed to lack the attention span required to catch a fish. Wanda
actually caught Homer's only fish. It was later estimated that Homer
actually fished for a grand total of 10 minutes the entire
time he was on Lake Powell. This 10 minutes of actual fishing was
estimated to be approximately 5% of the total time he spent
talking about fishing on Lake Powell prior to actually being
there.
As the evening grew ever darker and the TV
addicts seemed to be getting in the spirit of being alive in the
Great Outdoors, staying up long enough to be scared by the big
hulking simian form that hovered over us. Some of us thought it
looked like a gorilla. Some of us thought it looked like a Bhudda.
Some of us thought it looked like a simian/gorilla/Bhudda like
person named Russell whom we all knew. But in the end it was
decided it looked like a Skull.
And so night 2 on the Houseboat was spent at
Skull Cove. Where would we be on night 3?
