My husband was helping a friend who lives nearby with some errands. He kept seeing trucks pulling boats on our main street. I’ve noticed the boat traffic, too. I didn’t give it much thought where they were headed. They are going north from our house. They certainly aren’t taking boats to the Grand Canyon, are they?
“There’s a lake 15 miles up the road,” our friend said.
WHAT???
Water in the middle of the desert. Who would have known? And the good news: it’s super close to us. It was crowded on Memorial Weekend with lots of campers and boats, but it’s a short drive for us to check out mid week. We explored during the busy weekend for future visits. And we bought a map and marked all our destinations, so my husband was a happy camper.
Our plan is to head up to the lake after my husband is done working. It’s in the Tonto National Forest and the drive is breathtaking. We’ll take a pop-up tent for shade, beach chairs and a cooler full of water and a picnic dinner. The only problem will be the heat, but maybe it won’t be so bad after getting wet. It will be a nice change to enjoy a lake instead of the pool.
I was excited to find out we live so close to water! The lake has several campgrounds, two restaurants and a marina that rents kayaks, jet skis, pontoon and speed boats and stand up and paddle boards. I’m finally going to try SUP.
That is GORGEOUS!! How funny that you just stumbled upon it.. We stumbled upon the most beautiful, shaded bike trail 13 YEARS (!!) after we moved down here.. AFTER the kids had left.. whaa?? Better late than never I guess.. 🙄
Isn’t that something that you found that trail 13 years later? I’m so glad we found this after six months. It could be a game changer.
I would say so! That water looks pristine!
So beautiful that you found this lake !
Life is filled with happy surprises. 🤗⚘
It’s so exciting! I can envision us spending lots of time there.
When you are new to an area and are adventurous it can be fun exploring. When we were traveling, we would watch for sign along the road extolling some wonderful thing only XX miles off the road. We very often would make a detour and go see what they we talking about. There are quite a few lakes around here. Enjoy!
It is exciting when we get out to explore. When we first arrived in December, we would try a new hike every weekend. Now it’s too hot for that. But the lake is inviting. We’ve been to Lake Pleasant as well.
That looks like a wonderful lake… and so close! It looks like the perfect place to SUP (except watch out for the speedboats).
We are excited to go back — at least once a week. I’ve wanted to try SUP but haven’t done it yet. I’ll let you know if I do it.
That looks lovely. 🙂
It was such a great find!
💗