Getting the flavor of ... Cruising Lake Champlain, and more

Cruising Lake Champlain

The Moonlight Lady hearkens back to an era when traveling by boat was “both functional and glamorous,” said Nancy Trejos in The Washington Post. The 65-foot passenger yacht operates on Lake Champlain, whose gentle waters are “nestled between the Green Mountains of Vermont and New York’s Adirondacks.” It makes overnight stops at towns like Port Kent in New York and Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. Our voyage embarked from Burlington, Vt., on a day so clear that the lake “seemed to be smiling at us” as we drifted past tiny islets, including one that’s home to the lake’s oldest lighthouse. Following our peaceful night on board, I returned to the Lady’s deck the next morning to take in more sights. Gliding past Shelburne Farms, a National Historic Landmark with “some of the grandest barns I’ve ever seen,” I felt in no hurry for our journey to end.

Vermontdiscoverycruises.com

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The ‘Grand Canyon’ of boating

Imagine the Grand Canyon “filled nearly to the brim with water,” and you have Arizona’s Lake Powell, said Josh Noel in the Chicago Tribune. In fact, this 186-mile-long desert lake and popular recreation spot was created in 1963 when the Colorado River was dammed, flooding vast Glen Canyon. Our plan was to explore the lake in a rented boat, and within minutes of boarding our 22-foot V8 Bayliner Capri, we were “zooming freely amid the 100-foot rock walls,” taking in the “craggy beauty” all around us. We sliced through the “great expanse of rock, water, and dry desert air” as the sun beat down on our backs. As the day went on and the sun’s rays shifted, the water became greener, and the rock, “already so red and marbled that it looks like huge cuts of steak, turned redder still.” On the day of our visit, Lake Powell displayed a “grandeur that never got old.”

Lakepowell.com