Mantua Lake

Last night we drove up through Sardine Canyon and turned off at Mantua. Those of you who are not Cache Valley natives will pronounce this very differently than those who are: the correct pronunciation (or so I've been told) is "Man-a-way". How they get that from Mantua, I've no idea. Also, Mantua is between Logan and Brigham City, to give you an idea of its location.
You need a little background before I continue with the story: After our Bear Lake adventure, Zak was browsing in a watersports shop while I got a "famous" raspberry shake. Really, he didn't want to wait with me while I got the shake. He was protesting on the grounds that you can tack a "famous" in front of just about anything; it doesn't make it taste better, or even make the item actually famous, it's just a marketing ploy. I guess it's one I succumb to often, and I'm okay with it. It was a pretty good shake. Anyway, he found an inflatable boat that looked like it could probably seat two people, so we splurged and bought it. We had borrowed his brother's floatation device for our Bear Lake trip and had been looking that day for one of our own. So we found one, and that was great.
We've been meaning to test our little boat since then and we finally got around to it last night on Mantua Lake. I was a little concerned that it wouldn't actually float with both of us in it due to the warning about the number of pounds it stated on the box that it was able to support. I won't go into that exact figure here, because, frankly, who cares? You don't really want to know what I weigh, nor do I care to share.
After a five-minute session pumping the thing up with this awesome (dare I insert "famous" here?) double-power hand pump that I bought for $8 at KMart and some tricky manuvering (read: Sarah couldn't figure out how to get in the boat without letting in LOTS of cold water), we were ready to go. We floated out into the serene lake and watched the ducks diving in the water. We didn't see any fish jumping, but we saw a lot of little bubbles where they came to the surface to feed.
As the evening wore on (we got there about 7:30), it got cold. I mean, come on, we're in the mountains, on a mountain lake. We drifted and just sat and talked for a long while - when the stars began to come out, we started making our way to the shore. Now, the interesting thing is, we didn't have any paddles. We hadn't bought any. Zak's flippant comment to the saleslady when she asked if we would like to purchase some was, "I have hands." Thank you. So we're out in the middle of this lake, it's getting dark, I'm freezing (and so is Zak, but he won't admit it), and we have no paddles. Obviously, we knew before we went out that we'd have to use our hands to paddle back in, or get out and swim -- just so anyone reading this doesn't think we're total dopes. So we start paddling. And we paddle, and paddle, and paddle some more. It took a really long time to get back to the shore, and we were COLD by the time we got there. Zak had a great idea after we got home last night. He said that next time (uh-huh, yeah) we'll tie a rope around one of the big rocks on the shoreline and attach it to the boat. Then we'll be able to pull ourselves in when we're ready to go. I think we should just get some oars or paddles.
I had to post a couple of pictures - the one of Zak because he is just so darn cute, and the crooked one (ah, my wonderful photography skills!) of the mountain, moon, and water, because it reminds me of how peaceful it was out on the lake. It was another fun adventure!