Family Houseboating Vacation to Lake Don Pedro

We did another really fun three day weekend with our labor day vacation crew to Lake Don Pedro.  We checked in early at the Don Pedro Marina.  The early check-in allowed us to sleep on the houseboat at the marina and be ready to leave the dock first thing in the morning.  When we checked in, they didn't give us many details on how to operate the electrical systems on the boat.  There is a generator and switches to supply power to various things like the oven and the entertainment center, but nobody told us that you couldn't run the air conditioning unit on the boat at the same time as the hottub.  That first night, we didn't get the stove working right, but we were able to fire up the BBQ and grill chicken breasts.  The kids ate pasta and everyone went to bed late.  There was a boat with a bunch of college kids about three houseboats away from us, but when the security guard came by around midnight, it was our boat that got the warning for making too much noise (much deservedly). 

The next morning we were moving a little slow and the crew at the marina needed to give us the tour of our boat as well as fix a few things that weren't working right.  Namely, the second engine was running, but the prop wasn't working quite right.  All the kids were up early with the sun and most of the adults were feeling the effects of drinking our entire beer supply for the weekend in the opening night.  I headed off to the marina store at the other end of the dock with the kids and got coffee and a very tasty crossiant sandwich with cheese, ham and eggs, plus I picked up a couple orange juices for my wife, Robin, who was fighting a cold.

After we were briefed on the boats systems, the staff at the Don Pedro Marina drove the houseboat which had four bed rooms and two pull out couches to the main buoy and handed the controls to us.  We got a couple of really good tips from them.  First, the boat is very large, but if you only operate one engine, it saves a ton of gas.  Tip number two was to not let the kids swim near the generator while it was running because of the exhaust.  Lastly, they told us that the lake's water level was going down quickly, so if we beached the boat during the day, to re-tie it every four hours.  Lastly, we were given instructions to run the generator for four hours every night to keep the fridge cool, run the air conditioning, and to keep the batteries charged.

We had the 70 foot Millenium Houseboat with the following amenities

• Four queen bedrooms, but only one bed didn't have a footer, so if you have many tall people, there is sure to be a battle for that one room.  The two below rooms were also a lot hotter than the rooms on the main floor
• Two sleeper sofas.  The sofa beds were very lump and in bad shape, but the kids didn't mind at the end of a full day of skiing, I fell asleep next to my daughter in seconds.
• The TV and DVD player were a bit complicated to operate.  Once you set the sound of the receiver to CD and turned on surround sound, the TVs sound came on, but that's not what the directions said.  Also, the satelite TV was really nice, but it only worked while the boat was docked.  So there was no cruising and watching football going on, although I would have liked it.
• Gas Grill.  We cooked ribs and filet mignon (entire beef tenderloin).  It doesn't get nearly as hot as other propane based grills, but it got the job done.
• The upper deck had a hottub and a large covered area, plus a slide that the kids could go down and splash into the lake.
• Two bathrooms with showers.

We had four families on the boat.  The boat smelled pretty bad at the beginning, but after they pumped the sewage from the tank, it got better as the days went on.  All in all, the boat was fine, and the amenities didn't take away from our fun.

We water skied, rented a jet ski, fished, innertubed, lounged on the boat and ate and drank pretty much all weekend.

Lake Don Pedro feels bigger than most lakes and even though it was a holiday weekend, it wasn't very crowded. The water skiing was really nice in the early morning and late evenings, but as the day progressed, the water was really choppy and all we did was put the kids on the tube and pull them around the lake.

We let the kids fish one night and one morning. The first night we used small pieces of hotdogs as fishing bait on size 4 hooks with just a few splitshot weights to try and catch catfish. It was pretty funny once they started biting. We caught several fish and a few really large catfish. All of them were let go. In the morning the kids used night crawlers on similar setups and they caught sunfish and bass. Julia, my four year old daughter, really wanted to skin a fish and eat it. We all thought it was pretty funny since she is a pretty girly girl.

While part of the group was on the ski boat and a couple people were on the rented jet ski, the kids swam off the back of the houseboat and went down the water slide.  Even our two year old went down the slide a couple of times.

The weather was really nice and the water was plenty warm, but not so warm that it wasn't refreshing.  Each day it got a little cooler and each night was cooler than the previous night as well.

I crashed while water skiing at the lake, which isn't unusual for me, but this time I fell I landed on the side of my head and ended up with quite a bit of water in my ears.  As the evening went on, it started to bother me more and more.  I put my head down on a pillow to get the water to drain, but it didn't.  One of the ladies suggested putting a drop of alcohol or hydrogen peroxide in my ear to help the water evaporate.  My wife squeezed a few drops out of a wipe in the first aid kit and dropped it in my ear.  OH MY GOSH!  I haven't been in that much pain in a long time.  Really.  It was unbelievably painful.  After a few days since being back from the lake, my ears still feel plugged and my hearing isn't very good, so I went to the doctor.  She looked in my ear and the fall from water skiing actually caused my eardrum to have a small rupture.  The lesson is, if you might have a rupture in your eardrum, don't put drops in it unless you want the very unpleasant feeling of deep pain.