Butcher Jones With Cindy

After my brother and his sweet family left, Cindy and I found a day to go for a hike!  I was planning to take her to the hike with all the waterfalls, but it was raining up north and we didn't want to risk perishing in a nightmarish flash flood death!

We instead did the Butcher Jones trail around part of Saguaro Lake.

The drive there through the mountains was gorgeous.

We found out when we arrived, however, that we needed a Tonto Pass to be able to park in the lot.  Last time Greg and I did this hike, we drove all the way back to a gas station and delayed our hike by quite a bit.  This time, however, I decided to pop into the marina to see if they had an automated machine to give us a pass, and they DID!  It was only about a mile away from our trailhead.

We were happy.

There's the lake!

Look!  A little cave!

This was the end of our trail for the day, and we sat down and had our lunch overlooking the lake.

I had a stuffed pepper with veggies and some garbanzo bean chocolate chip cookies.

It wasn't as chilly as we had expected it to be and I was hot and sweaty by this time.  I was excited to head back and check out a river we'd passed by getting to the trail head.

But it was a lovely view with lots of water birds to watch.

The clouds made interesting patterns in the water.

We saw a tiger pillow in the bushes!

There is Four Peaks!

On the way out, we realized that there was no cell service.  This emergency call box was set up by the sheriff's office.  Thankfully, we didn't need it!

We found the place with the river!  I had read about this site and wanted to check it out.

It was officially closed, but I appreciated all the picnic areas.

Clearly, this is an area the wild horses like to congregate.

I quickly walked toward the river.  The whole area was covered in a thick blanket of pebbles.

And I was surprised to find shells!

This will be a nice place to come back even when the weather gets hotter!

We floated some shells down the river.

It looked like rain was coming . . . 

We enjoyed our National Forest!

Ooo!  A little teensy bit of rain!

It was a lovely wonderful day!