Our Weekend Trip To Workman Creek, Arizona

(All pictures taken with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8)

Last weekend, Robert and I went to help his brother do some work at an Elk's Youth Camp along Workman Creek on the Tonto National Forest.

We had our trailer with our quad on it so we decided to go the longer way around to Workman Creek and stay on the paved roads. I got some shots of the Matazal Mountains, Edwards Peak, and Four Peaks. The patches of orange in the third picture are the Arizona Poppies starting to come up.

These pictures of Roosevelt Lake and the Roosevelt Lake Bridge were taken through the windshield of the truck. I hate it when I'm on the wrong side of the vehicle for pictures.

From the looks of the Roosevelt Lake Dam the water is up quite a bit. It should be good fishing this year.

This is Klondike Butte above the south end of Roosevelt Lake. You can see the scars from flooding several years ago.

This is on the bridge that crosses the Salt River, close to where people put in to go tubing.

This is an awesome shot of Roosevelt Lake as seen from way up in the mountains to the east.

This is the Elk's Youth Camp where we stayed for the weekend. The cabins were to cold so we all camped out in the mess hall where it was much warmer.

The Workman Creek area is so beautiful and so full of textures and patterns that I actually had a hard time taking pictures. The pictures just don't do the place any justice. I would love to visit this place in the summer when there are more colors; right now everything is still in winter mode.

Workman Creek is home to deer, elk, mountain lion, bear, and several more species of animals. We never did see any wildlife, probably due to all the noise we were making.

While Robert was busy running the backhoe leveling an area for a concrete basketball court, me and a friend went for a ride on the quads and found a couple of mines. It's a good thing we didn't go in the mines for reasons that I will explain later.

Later when the guys were done working for the day we took a ride farther up Workman Creek. On the side of the road we found a really nice waterfall. I really wish there had been more color but winter doesn't offer too much of that.

Farther up the road we found Workman Creek Falls. Now this is an awesome waterfall.

I don't know how steep this waterfall is but it was steep enough to creep me out when I looked down. The sound of the waterfall was incredible.

On the canyon walls surrounding the falls were these huge icicles and we kept hearing them break off and fall to the ground.

We found a ledge that allowed us to look straight down to the base of the waterfall and we saw something that we have never seen before. At the base, the water had been splashing up and freezing, causing a wall of ice. This thing must be huge.

On our way back to the Elks Youth Camp we came across another mine with a yellow sign above it that read:

I guess someone took down the signs on the previous mines. So it's a good thing I find out what was mined before I go playing around.

The rest of the weekend was spent digging a hole for a septic tank and leech line…

On the way home we decided to take the trip through Young rather than the way we came in. The road was bumpier but we got to see more sights. All in all, we had a great weekend but we were pretty beat when we got home.