Not long ago, Jay P. Clark and his new wife went on a honeymoon vacation across Lake Powell, at the Arizona/Utah line. Jay P. Clark says that they purchased a boat before embarking on the weeklong trip; the two took occasional side trips for kayaking and hiking along the way. Here, Jay P. Clark answers a few questions about this memorable vacation excursion.
Q: Jay P. Clark, what can you tell us about the lake itself?
Jay P. Clark: Well, Lake Powell was built in the sixties as a man-made lake, but it is so immense that it never filled completely until 1981. I actually met the man who was in charge of the construction project and told what it was in like being in charge of 5000 plus laborites. (He is retired and lives near my parents in Eagle, Idaho.) It’s a huge lake, with almost 1900 miles of shoreline and an average depth that’s well over 300 feet. The surface of the lake is over 250 square miles! There are mile marker buoys all the way from the dam to the furthest reaches of navigation in the main channel. Even if you were to stay in the main channel and try to boat up river, it is still over 200 miles one way most years.
Q: Did you do any fishing along the way?
Jay P. Clark: We absolutely love to fish. Just catch and release and normally, we would have fished for crappie, striped bass, Northern Pike and a couple of other fish. It being our honeymoon and all, we just didn’t bother with getting the out of state permits. We had each other to focus on. Besides, where my wife comes from, Southeast Alaska, she is use to catching King Salmon so it is hard to get her too excited about catching “little fish.”
Q: Tell us about your side trips…
Jay P. Clark: Honestly, I don’t know where to begin. There’s really too much to see, even over the course of a week. There are over 90 side canyons along the way, and we originally did plan on visiting the Rainbow Bridge, one of the biggest natural bridge formations in the world, but we didn’t realize how every little canyon was going to be such an amazing wonder that had us just overwhelmed with the majesty of it all about everywhere we went. We did also saw some of the remnants of the long-gone Anasazi culture including pictographs and structures, as well as the magnificent geological formations of the canyons.
Q: As big as the lake is, parts of it have to be pretty busy…
Jay P. Clark: Definitely, there are areas that are kind of overrun with jet skis and water skiers. At one point while rowing up a 15 foot wide canyon in a kayak, a jet skis flew around me going probably 35 to 40 mph that just about knocked me over. Canyons can often go that narrow and over 100 feet deep for miles, but that experience will keep you searching for that really remote canyon. Getting 2 miles per gallon with 65 gallons of usable fuel really limited our range. Hauling more fuel would be one thing I would do in the future. I also love waterskiing but that wasn’t really what we were after on our trip, though. The boat we bought has a kitchen, sleeping quarters, and showers, so we were able to be pretty self-reliant. Even with all that, it has enough power to pull a salaam water-skier like myself but hopefully I will get to do that next trip.
Q: This really sounds like quite an experience.
Jay P. Clark: It absolutely was. I’d definitely call it a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
Jay P. Clark is a resident of Mountain Lake, Idaho, where he serves as president and CEO of Clark’s Crystal Springs Ranch. At Crystal Springs Ranch, Jay P. Clark has been a front-runner in the cultivation of Camelina for biofuel use. The ranch also includes a trucking company consisting of six trucks, devoted to hauling farm products, hay, heavy equipment and oversize loads. In addition to his service at Crystal Springs Ranch, Jay P. Clark also received his Juris Doctor degree from University of Idaho in 1996.