Halloween Cruise

Once we got back from Disneyland I was exhausted.  Something about Disneyland, not sleeping much or soundly for five nights (Leila doesn't sleep well on vacation), all of the playing before we left, or the stress of getting everything done to be ready to go on vacation had completely drained me.  So I barely left my house at all the next week except when I had to go into work and caught up on my TV shows.  Come Saturday night though I was ready to get out and do something.  So Jason and I decided to go on a Halloween Cruise down the Provo River.  Exotic, right?

Many, many years ago (sometime when I was in high school) my family went with another family to do this cruise.  I remembered that we went and I remembered going back to the other family's house and eating dinner in a pumpkin, but I couldn't remember much about the actual cruise.

It is put on by CLAS Ropes down by Utah Lake.  Essentially you get on this big platform boat (that holds about 40 people) then the "driver" pulls the boat up and down a section of the river using a guide rope that they've run down the middle of the river.  Along the way there is a house with the windows semi-blacked out to form a smiling jack-o-lantern face, over a hundred hand-carved pumpkins, some Halloween lights and witches.  A pirate even boards the boat and gives everyone a piece of candy!  As we returned to dock, the captain told us a "scary" story and sent us on our merry way.

It was a fun little activity.  I wish Leila had been just a little bit older so that she could grasp more of what was going on.  Instead we had to bribe her to sit still and be quiet with goldfish crackers.  The guy who was manning our boat was actually the owner of CLAS Ropes so it was interesting to hear him talk about starting the cruise up 14 years ago.  They also do a Christmas Cruise but I don't know if I'll be brave enough to venture into the cold.  I think the night we went was one of the last perfect fall nights we're going to get this year.