Houseboat Vacations - 2

From Macedon, where you board the boats offered by Mid-Lakes, you can head either west on the canal toward Rochester or east toward Seneca Lake. We wanted to visit the town of Seneca Falls, birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement—don’t miss its outstanding Women’s Rights National Historic Park and Museum (tel. 315-568-2991; www.nps.gov/wori)—so we headed east. Along the way, we passed through the towns of Newark, Lyons and Clyde. Our first night we docked at Lyons and cooked on board, but the next day we went as fast as we could to reach Seneca Falls. It took us most of the day, but we really enjoyed relaxing, bird watching and getting more comfortable with the lock procedures. The kids liked sitting on the roof of the boat reading and we all took turns steering.

The main pleasures of the trip, though, were not really found in the towns. They were found cruising along the canal and spotting a golden eagle with a fish in its talons, or watching the joy in my daughter’s face when she caught a fish with a less-than-stellar fishing pole we bought at a discount store in Clyde. Early on, we noticed another boat from Mid-Lakes tied near us and played ‘tag’ with them throughout the week. We’d wave at people we passed (who laughed at the pirate flag we had hoisted), and nervously docking on the bank of the canal one hot day to repeatedly jump off the boat into the cooling canal waters also brought big smiles

For one week, it was like we dropped out of our very hectic lives into another time, one where floating down the canal looking at clouds for hours, talking with your friends and family, was all that mattered.

• Lake Powell in Arizona offers houseboaters a unique chance to really enjoy the many canyons and plateaus of the Glen Canyon.
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Lake Powell, Ariz.

I had a very different houseboat experience on a quick trip to Lake Powell in Arizona. Lake Powell is the second largest man-made lake in the United States and is a water sports wonderland. A large part of it is actually in Utah, but the Lake Powell Resort & Marina is in Arizona. Houseboats here range in size from 44 feet to 75 feet in length. I stayed on a 75-foot boat, which had, among other amenities, a water slide and a hot tub. For the most part, boaters here anchor on a beach on the lake and use speedboats (available for rent and which you can tow behind your houseboat) to explore the gorgeous surrounding scenery.

One day I took a powerboat to visit the Rainbow Bridge National Monument, a spiritual site important to the Navajo and a popular tourist site on the lake. The Sandstone arch is 290 feet tall at its highest point and is the largest natural bridge in the world.

There is about 2,000 miles of shoreline, which gives you some idea of the size of the lake. The lake is park of the Glen Canyon Nation Recreation Area, which encompasses 1.25 million acres. The stark beauty of the red-rock canyons and wide open spaces is spectacular. The boat I was on rents for about $12,000 per week in high season, but it sleeps 12 people.