To Roosevelt Lake

We left Quail Ridge RV Resort in the morning and headed north through Safford and the San Carlos Apache Reserve.  We'd never driven this route before.   Safford is an agricultural centre and cotton is a big crop here.  The Gila River Valley was looking very lush and green.  

As we headed north we came upon patches of poppies in bloom on the hillsides.  

Pictures taken from the truck don't do it justice. 

We arrived and set up camp.  Windy Hill Campsite is a very large and confusing campground.  There's many different loops and only some of them are open at this time of year. There are numerous boat launches set up for different lake levels. It took us a couple of days to find our way in and out without turning the wrong way.

Our very talkative camp host told us to camp in this loop (Chipmunk) or Coati loop as Coyote loop is the party loop.  He told us this loop was quieter. Hah!

There's no electricity here so people run their generators all day long.  The generator hours are 6 am to 10 pm, if you can believe it. In the summer you can run them 24 hours a day for air conditioning in the extreme heat.

Looks like a nice day to sit outside but our neighbor drove us indoors with his extremely loud generator.  He was in a tent but charged up his motorboat for hours every day.  Since when do you need to charge your boat?  It had a giant outboard motor.  Once he finally turned off his generator our other neighbor turned theirs on.  And so on.

 

We thought of moving to Coati Loop because it's only small rvs up to 20 feet and tenters so less likelihood of  generators, but it was full up.

The next morning we did a bird walk around the campground.  We saw our first osprey of the trip.

A lone pelican flew in.

There were western grebes calling.

 

Later in the day we drove up a forestry road that led to the Mill Ridge trailhead for the Arizona Trail.

We drove up and up the one lane road along the spine of Mill Ridge.

Up and up we drove with fine views of the lake below.

Some nice flowers up here.

Poppies were out in places.

Finally we reached Mill Ridge Trailhead.

People had left a cache of potable water for Arizona Trail hikers.

We hiked down the Vineyard section of the Arizona for a stretch until I got attacked by some very nasty ants.  Fortunately I could unzip my pantlegs and shake them out.  Then we beat a hasty retreat.  The bites were ferocious and I could feel them hours later.