Woods Canyon Lake

Mark’s autumn break start­ed last week, and we final­ly were going to vis­it the lake we did­n’t get to in the spring. Valya booked for three days a two-bed­room apart­ment in a resort (ie a two-room hotel room) called Bison Ranch. This resort is locat­ed not far from two small, merged with each oth­er, the vil­lages of Heber and Over­gaard. This place is famous for a large num­ber of pic­turesque canyons cov­ered with pine forests and a large num­ber of lakes. Hunt­ing and mush­room pick­ing are allowed in the forests, camp­ing sites are equipped. Many of the lakes formed by block­ing streams and rivulets, and installing arti­fi­cial dams. Fish and cray­fish are found in these lakes. To sup­port tourism and fish­ing, rain­bow trout fry are peri­od­i­cal­ly launched into the lakes . The rest of the fish repro­duce on their own.

Before the trip, we bought a spin­ning rod, bor­rowed two books about Ari­zona mush­rooms from the library, loaded a food cool­er into the car and set off ear­ly in the morn­ing. Roads in Ari­zona great, but because the place we were dri­ving is at a height two kilo­me­ters above sea lev­el, our path con­sist­ed of con­tin­u­ous descents and ascents through the moun­tains.

Two and a half hours lat­er we were at Woods Canyon Lake. This is a small but very beau­ti­ful lake. Its depth reach­es 7.6 meters. It is long and nar­row, has the shape of a blot with many sleeves. The lake is one of the well-main­tained and acces­si­ble of all lakes in the area, so it is espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar with tourists. Good access roads lead to it, there are park­ing lots, a boat sta­tion, a shop, tables with bench­es and a bar­be­cue, toi­lets. There are places for camp­ing with tents and for trail­ers around the lake.

We had break­fast at the table and went for a hike around the lake. Of course, we did not col­lect any mush­rooms. First­ly, it was very dry in the for­est; here, too, there had been no rain for a long time. Sec­ond­ly, it was already about 11 am, late for mush­rooms. I remem­ber in the Moscow region, my grand­moth­er and I got up at 4 o’clock for mush­rooms. And third­ly, some of the mush­rooms in our book looked very much like toad­stools, and the descrip­tion claimed that they were edi­ble. Con­verse­ly, look­ing edi­ble mush­rooms have been marked as high­ly poi­so­nous. Mush­rooms came across on trees (in the book they also belonged to edi­ble mush­rooms), but we decid­ed not to risk it. And what kind of mush­rooms can there be with a lot of peo­ple haik­ing around the lake? In gen­er­al, I am sur­prised at the Amer­i­cans and their desire to go out into nature and be like. Prob­a­bly because they spend a lot of time behind the wheel.

We walked around the lake in about three hours. On the way we came across all kinds of chip­munks, squir­rels. We even saw a small snake. When they walked around the lake, in the most crowd­ed place, about 200 meters from the store, two huge elks were lying and rest­ing in the for­est. Here is anoth­er local fea­ture — ani­mals are not afraid of tourist routes.

After the lake, we went to check into a hotel. We were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the ranch. The hous­es on its ter­ri­to­ry resem­bled a town from films about the Wild West. All hous­es are paint­ed in dif­fer­ent col­ors and have a rus­tic look, while inside they are fur­nished with mod­ern fur­ni­ture and mod­ern appli­ances. Two bed­rooms, two bath­rooms, two bal­conies, fire­place, gas grill on the bal­cony. The kitchen is com­bined with the hall and had all the nec­es­sary uten­sils: dish­wash­er, refrig­er­a­tor, microwave, dish­es. There is a TV in every room, in the hall there is also a TV, a VCR. There was a mod­ern wash­ing machine in which we imme­di­ate­ly washed our haik­ing clothes. Peo­ple often rent this resort for sev­er­al months. In the sum­mer they hide from the heat, and in the win­ter you can ski­ing an hour away from it.

In the evenings we went to play bil­liards and table ten­nis. There was a game room in the admin­is­tra­tive build­ing, where there were two Amer­i­can pool tables. It dif­fers from Russ­ian bil­liards by the size of both the table and the pock­ets them­selves and the rules. We were the only ones who want­ed to play it. Maybe because it was paid. Drop 4 quar­ters and the balls fall out. Hit a pock­et — you can’t get the ball until you score it all. For a new game, throw in a new dol­lar. On the last day of our stay, we were throw­ing mon­ey, and the balls got stuck all the time and did­n’t roll out. I had to call the girl to open the table and pull out the stuck ball. Then she got tired of run­ning, and she did not close it, she said, play as much as you want. We played enough, Marik was hap­py. Levi taught us, he plays well.

There is also a pool and a jacuzzi on the ter­ri­to­ry, but we did not swim, because just dur­ing our trip it got cold here. The tem­per­a­ture in dropped to +6 degrees on the first night. Then it got warmer again, but the decid­u­ous trees turned yel­low-red in one night. When we drove here, we looked for slight­ly yel­lowed trees among the pines, and a day lat­er we found our­selves in a real gold­en autumn.