Along the Jojoba Trail

Photographically we have returned to Bartlett Lake.

Bartlett is a small lake in the mountains northeast of Phoenix, surrounded by some beautiful Sonoran desert scenery. Because of the above average of rainfall this past winter, the desert is particularly colorful this spring.

It is the second largest lake in the Phoenix Metro Valley area, but possibly because it is about 50 miles from downtown Phoenix, it does not receive as many visitors as we had expected.

We drove to Jojoba Boating Site and walked along the shoreline. From here we could see that the marina seemed to have a large number of boats docked there, but few were on the water during the weekday morning that we visited the reservoir.

Along the one mile drive to SB Cove, we passed large beds of wildflowers along the roadside. On more than one occasion, several visitors parked along the road to photograph these bursts of color.

But it was along portions of the Palo Verde Trail and the Jojoba Trail that we found the flowers pictured here.













Information provided by the ranger at the Tonto National Forest noted that the Forest Service had partnered with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to have a women's inmate crew construct the 1.3 mile Jojoba Trail.