Friday morning we decided to head toward Carefree, AZ and when we arrived we found that this was the weekend for the Indian Art Festival. We stopped to see the "goings on" and found a nice little grouping of exhibits in the downtown area and spent a couple of hours walking through. We sampled the food ( a brat smothered with pulled pork is my new favorite sandwich) and some chocolate. There was nice entertainment and beautiful weather in downtown Carefree!!
After the art show and the farmers market we headed east on Cave Creek Highway into the Tonto National Forest. Our senior citizen pass got us in at a very discounted rate and we drove several miles into the desert before turning into 10 miles of a rough,washboard, gravel road that took us to Horseshoe Lake, a 900 acre reservoir that the city of Phoenix usually depends upon for a good part of its water supply. The lake was 0% full and as you can see from the picture that the only water is the the Verde River that runs through it and just a bit of water remaining in the very lowest spot of the the lake. Normally, this is a great place to catch bass, crappie and walleye. Not so last Friday.
We drove back to the main road and headed to Bartlett Lake, another reservoir on the Verde River that supports the Phoenix water supply and is a huge recreational lake. This lake was 33% full! The normal average depth of this 2000 acre, 13 mile long lake is 100 feet. The lake also supports a good fishery and has some beautiful vistas including the Yellow Cliffs shown in the accompanying photograph. Note also that under normal water level conditions, the desert cactus goes right down to the waterline!! The water was so low that boaters could not use normal boat ramps but had to back their boats directly into the shallow water and wrestle them off an on the trailers.
We drove back to Scottsdale in time to have happy hour with Duane at the Twisted Lizard. The chicken strips are awesome!!
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