I had no idea what to expect when we journeyed to Lake Powell. I’d never been on a man-made lake, let alone a houseboat. As our giant, two-story, toaster-shaped boat lumbered off the dock away from the marina, rocking us into the still water of the reservoir, it felt like we were leaving civilization and heading into the heart of…strangeness? I did not grow up on lakes and knew nothing about the assortment of lake vehicles we dragged behind us like so many tin cans on a newlyweds car.  But, while this landscape was strange to me, I was game. We had food and drinks and a lounge with a grill on the top deck from which I eyed the otherworldly red rock formations jutting out of what felt like the bowl of a giant marble sink. Across the basin, other giant toasters bobbed and tiny jet skis criss-crossed the dammed up water against majestic sandstone rock faces as old as the Jurassic. We journeyed this way for an hour across the sink bowl in search of an unoccupied shore on which to dock. Finally, a deserted, tumbleweed-laden strip of dry dirt appeared in the distance. Land ho, we shouted with beer cans raised. In a flash, the sky over head turned dark grey and purple as a storm rushed in, its skirts flapping around wildly like it was late for the opening curtain. The boat began to toss and our captain, one of us, pointed the giant bread box toward the shore.  We’re gonna have to hit hard so we can beach. As we got closer, the houseboat, seemingly unmanned, headed onward at a steady clip until it hit the ground, lodging us there and causing us to loose our footing and spill our beers. Someone threw out the anchors, and then the rusty gangway, and, like the first men on the moon, we debarked from the safety of the vessel on to the craggy, lunar soil. All around us, storm clouds hovered waiting to dump their load, and striated rock formations, like epic Rothko paintings, jutted upward, looking down on us, having seen it all in their millennium of becoming wonders of the world. The dried and spiky brambles of moored Russian thistle hooked into the soles of our feet through our cheap rubber river shoes as we walked out into the dusk. Under an inky sky, we combed the shores for boulders to form a fire pit, and gathering around the flames, we lit our drugstore sparklers, raising them up to the rocks in honor of this strange and beautiful place.