see Part 4 

“Sometime in 1970, Pete was assigned to command the first crew to visit the Skylab space station and I was elated to be informed that Pete had requested that Joe Kerwin and myself be on his crew.”

We had beat the Soviets to the moon, but they beat us in the effort to place a space station in Earth orbit. Their program was called Salyut and was very successful. The Skylab was built from an unused third stage from the Saturn 5 rocket that was used for our moon missions. (Remember the three cancelled lunar missions?)

(Skylab - click image for larger view and information)

There were to be three crew visits with no overlap. NASA’s guidelines for extending our time in space was to go no longer than double our last experience. Frank Borman and Jim Lovell had spent 14 days in orbit on Gemini 7, so our goal was to see what the human responses were to 28 days in microgravity. If we were successful, the other two crews were slated to each spend 56 days in orbit.

I recently came across my diary from our Lake Powell houseboat trip in September of 2000. It was a good trip, and completely different from the trip we took in October of 2006. The adventures are never the same, so I think its worthy of inclusion on the family website.

I didn't have a digital camera on this trip, and I managed to break my 35mm camera in the middle of this voyage, but I did capture some great pictures anyway. These were created from the originals, which cannot be found, so their meager low resolution will have to do.

Lake Powell Houseboat Trip

Sunday, September 17, 2000

We arrived in Page, Arizona in the late afternoon to go motoring in a houseboat on Lake Powell for five days. Page is right at the tip of the Lake and on the edge of the state border. Wahweap, the private marina where our houseboat was docked, is just across the state line in Utah, in the same park as the public marina, which is in Arizona. Because Arizona doesn’t follow daylight savings time, and we were coming and going so much, it was hard to know what state we were in and what time it was at any given moment. The lake straddles both states as well, so any official building you enter, usually has clocks on the wall with both time zones. You may think that this is a petty thing, but it becomes important if you have to return your boat at a certain time, and that time is Utah time, not Arizona time.

This was sent to me by Carol Jones, daughter of Carl Cramer.  These are memories from various people that were read at a family reunion a few years ago.  If you have any pictures you could add to this story, please email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

The story begins on February 27, 1909, in Bellwood, Pennsylvania. A baby boy, named Carl Marshall was born to Archibald (Archie) and Maude Wilhelmina Cramer. He was the oldest of 5 children, having 4 younger sisters, Thora, Lucille, Lillian and Helen. His dad was a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. When he was about 7 years old, his dad built a house on Blair Street in Bellwood, Pennsylvania, where they lived for many years. Carl's childhood outdoor entertainment included playing baseball, football, and marbles, hide and seek, kick the wicket and prisoner's base. Indoor time was mostly reading, as there was no radio or TV when he was growing up in Bellwood.