Commentary: The latest status symbol in LDS circles? A houseboat trip to Lake Powell.

This summer, I went to Lake Powell for the first time in 15 years. The trip brought back a flood of memories that reminded me how formative this place was to my childhood.

Since it’s now on my mind (or in my algorithm) I’ve started noticing Lake Powell all over my social media feed. I’ve seen Whitney Leavitt practicing for her upcoming “Dancing With the Stars” stint on a wakeboard boat. There was Jaxson Dart launching a football from the top of a houseboat as a “receiver” on a Jet Ski went out for a pass. I gasped when I saw Litia Garr from “The Bachelor” hanging out with Layla Taylor from “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” in the bow of a boat.

I cannot tell you how different these Lake Powell adventures look from mine, and I’m now finding myself feeling irrationally defensive. Maybe it’s because Hulu keeps finding ways to make reality shows about Latter-day Saint subcultures. Take “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” or its new reality show “Are You My First” (think “Love Island” for virgins), which are just two Hulu shows I would never have watched if it weren’t for their inclusion of my people.

So I’m here to beat Hulu at its own game and tell you about the Lake Powell I know — or at least the one I thought I did.

My summers in the sun

I grew up spending a week at Lake Powell every summer on a houseboat with a horde of cousins. Our pilgrimage began with a caravan of minivans driving six hours south down Interstate 15, the jagged mountains of Utah Valley giving way to the stunning redrock of southern Utah.

We hauled sleeping bags, foam pads and massive coolers from the car to the houseboat, and then drove several more hours to some secluded lagoon one of my teenage cousins had previously scouted via Jet Ski. My uncles yelled a lot throughout this process, the Dad-stress peaking when we had to set the houseboat’s anchors. But then it was like a switch was flipped and for the rest of the week, my big Latter-day Saint family let loose.

Our campsite was a potluck of water toys assembled from our eight households: ski boats, Jet Skis, tubes, air chairs. The houseboat was old and the air conditioning was always broken, but who cared when you could just go jump in the lake?

The Lake Powell of my youth was waking up with the sun, in the swimsuit you slept in, and hopping in someone’s boat for a 6 a.m. water-ski run on a breakfast of Red Vines. It was endless days in a massive water park set in one of the wonders of the world. It was late nights playing card games (always Scum, never poker). It was realizing my Dad was a human for the first time when I saw him dancing to the Steve Miller Band.

My Lake Powell was good clean fun plus a hearty dose of effort; you would learn to water-ski, or at least fill your sinuses with lake water trying.

Looking back, my family trips seem like the direct result of the “Homefront” ad campaign (you know the one: “Family – isn’t it about…time?”). If the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be wholly summed up as “family” like we claimed it was during the 1990s, Lake Powell is basically the Celestial Kingdom.

A new Lake Powell surfaces

I stopped going to Lake Powell because I grew up and moved away, but I didn’t lose sight of it. Each summer, pictures would pop up online; cousins and past neighbors making their own journeys to those remarkable redrocks.

I distinctly remember when I first saw it on influencer Rachel Parcell’s feed. It was a record scratch moment, so different from her typical billing of Outfits of the Day, and it bothered me. Lake Powell was my sacred place, and I didn’t want her overexposing it to her millions of followers.

As the years passed, Lake Powell seemed to change even more. I started seeing houseboats that looked more like yachts — the Tod Pedersen kind with working air conditioning, a private chef and a helipad on top. There were massive singles trips with 50 gorgeous people that made me want to run to my husband and renew our vows in whatever hideous sweatpants we were currently wearing.

My family switched our yearly trips to Bear Lake, a more accessible locale by every metric. We made amazing memories being “stuck together,” as my dad likes to say. But I missed Lake Powell and what it used to mean to go there.

For years, I wondered if I would ever go back. My husband and I don’t have a boat, nor any plans to buy one, which is jarring when we realize our parents were our same ages when they were buying boats and taking their first trips to Lake Powell.

But this spring my parents offered to take us on their boat. (They are in their 70s and went to Lake Powell three times this summer, because the ’90s dream is still alive and well within them.) It was a different trip than the ones from my youth. We stayed in a hotel instead of on a houseboat. There is so much less water than there used to be, and I’m now the one worrying about sunscreen and life jackets and food. Even with those changes, it was one of my favorite trips from the past 15 years.

‘Mormon Motorboaters’

I wonder if people outside the religion and/or Jell-O Belt register Lake Powell as a Latter-day Saint subculture, or if it’s just my oversensitivity to the issue. I wonder if this summer, curious Instagram followers started Googling things like, “Is Lake Powell part of LDS doctrine” or “Why do Latter-day Saints love swimming in the Grand Canyon?”

I mostly wonder if Hulu will create a new hit reality show called “Mormon Motorboaters,” which follows a mid-singles trip in which people have to do naughty challenges and couple up. There will be drama about varying chastity levels and plenty of plastic surgery, and I’ll be so sad as I watch all 10 episodes.

If that does happen, I hope that at least you know what the real Lake Powell is — or was. I hope you know Lake Powell is a magical and wholesome place, home to many sober glow stick parties. That not every Latter-day Saint knows how to wakesurf, just most of us. That Lake Powell may not have anything to do with my religion, but being there is heaven.

Note to readers • Rebbie Brassfield is a writer and creative director in the advertising industry. In real life, she’s a mom of two boys living in the suburbs. Online, you can find her overanalyzing media representations of Latter-day Saints on her Instagram account or podcast, “Mormons in Media” and as co-host of a monthly “Mormon Land” bonus podcast on Latter-day Saints in media.