Sounds kind of ominous, doesn’t it…..  “Butcher Jones”.  And note the bullet hole in the trail sign!

Actually it is one of our least ominous hikes.  A nice 2.5 mile (5 mile round trip) route over a rolling route, usually in view of Saguaro Lake.  Saguaro Lake is a reservoir on the Salt River.  (The red line below shows the elevation profile of the hike recorded on my cell phone app.)

The start of the hike skirts the shore of the lake on a pretty steady climb to an overlook point, then descends as you cross a peninsula, and then a modest ascent again to an overlook on a different part of the lake, then return the way we came.

The light for this hike was bright and cloud free, and most of the best scenes were sunward, so photography was a challenge.  I fiddled a lot with exposure and filters, at one point stacking both a circular polarizer and a graduated neutral density.  That will explain the “dark” appearance of some shots.

Saguaro Lake is definitely not like any of the 10,000 lakes back home in Minnesota.  Its’ “basin” is a series of flooded canyons with high cliff walls, and the predominate vegetation of cactus and mesquite replace the birches and pines of home.

I’m a sucker for photos of old snaggly trees.  I need to work on the shot below.  With a little work maybe I can enhance the “Halloween” look in a way fitting to the name “Butcher Jones”.

Here’s a view looking out towards the Four Peaks area.  Hopefully we will soon see some snow on the peaks to keep the reservoirs full.

Make a lake, and a fisherman will find it!  Below a bass fisherman scurries down-lake to his secret spot.