Apache Trail - Part 2

Wednesday, February 11, 2015 continued

Well, as we continued our drive along the Apache Trail we start to see Apache Lake.

From up the mountain, we can just see the marina at Apache Lake.

As we got closer we found a spot to stop and get another picture.  This is a long lake.

We are at an observation spot near the marina looking up river.  The two houseboats you see are actually anchored.

This is looking down river from the same spot.  We can see another large boat ramp across the way.

The concrete area you can see is where Tic took the pictures up and down river.

As we headed away from Apache Lake we could see this part of the lake that we could not see before.  This is a really long wide lake!  Please forgive all the electrical lines in the picture, but electrical lines were running everywhere.  It was hard to get pictures without them.

As we left Apache Lake and headed to Roosevelt Lake and Roosevelt Dam we went up into the mountains again.  We are heading to the road you can see at the top of the ridges.  It has been a beautiful drive!

As we got to the top of the other side of the mountains, we could see the river running between Roosevelt Lake and Apache Lake.  

We actually got to drive along the river seen in the previous picture.  We determined that the white line along the river is definitely due to lower water levels. We followed along the river for a good ways.

Suddenly we rounded a corner and WHAM there was Roosevelt Dam.

Tic took this picture look straight down from where he was standing in the previous picture.

This is a great picture of the dam.  We learned that indeed the water levels were way down.  However rains could easily result in the water levels rising quickly as the rain runoff has no where to go off the mountains but into the river.

Our path will take us up to that road above.  Interesting wall to support the road, huh?

This is the top side of the dam.  There is muck in the water, but the dark blackish spots are fish.

Here is a close up of the fish.  They were pretty large fish.

We were standing so close to Roosevelt Bridge that Tic could not get all of it in one picture, so he took this short video.  It is a cool looking bridge.

This is a look at Roosevelt Lake.  It is even larger than Apache Lake.

We got to pavement at the dam.  This is Roosevelt Lake on up the road.  See the white rock band near the waters edge.  We were told the lake is down 46ft.

Now we are headed to Tonto National Monument where we would see some cliff dwellings.

This is one of the cliff dwellings.  At the visitors center we were told there was another cliff dwelling also, but it was closed today.  We were allowed to walk up to this. There were two rangers up there available to answer your questions to the best of their ability.  We were told it was only 1/2 mile walk.  Once we got to the top we asked the elevation change from the parking lot and were told 350 ft.  It was a steep incline.

This is a closeup of one side of the large dwelling.

This is the other side of this large dwelling.

This is a look at some rooms that we were not allowed to walk through.

This is looking from the 2nd story of the 3 story part of the dwelling.

 From the cliff dwelling, you can see Roosevelt Lake and in the lower right is the parking lot.  Look how tiny the cars look.

This is one of the walls in the cliff dwelling.  The ranger talked about how fractured the rocks are and yet the cliff dwellings are still intact hundreds of years later.  Apparently the dirt in the area when wet dries like concrete which held the cliff dwellings together.  Some of the previous pictures of the walls show how they look like they have concrete over them.  This is something the cliff dwellers actually did themselves.

There I am headed down.  I did not realize Tic was so far behind me and taking pictures.  

We really enjoyed our hike and the views were awesome.  Our day has been fantastic.  Headed home now.  Been a fun day!