Paddling Alamo Lake

Earlier in our stay in Wikieup, we visited Alamo Lake and decided to bring our kayaks back.  Today was the day to paddle!  The drive from Wikieup to Alamo Lake is a little over 1.5 hours by dirt road, and we finally got into the water at 12:30 pm.  Our Jeep waited loyally for us as Kathy started out onto the lake:

The lake belonged to us and perhaps half a dozen boats with fishermen trying their luck along the shorelines.  We were the only ones to arrive from the north; all of the fishermen put their boats in from ramps at Alamo Lake State Park on the opposite shore.  The lake is stocked with largemouth bass, crappie, sunfish, channel catfish, flathead catfish and tilapia. It has witnessed fishing tournaments and record catches.

White pylons mark the various coves on the lake, and a series of pylons near the boat ramp mark "no wake" zones.  Overall, while there were a few rambunctious speedboaters, for the most part the fishermen trolled quietly, leaving us to enjoy the solitary beauty of the lake.

We found only one piece of detritus  on the lake:

The lake boasted a wider variety of wildlife than we expected.  We saw anhinga (below), pelicans, Western grebes, great blue herons, seagulls and a wide variety of small songbirds.

Not all of the wildlife was feathered.  A herd of 14 wild burros roamed the western shores, and we got close enough to get a good look at them:

The lake is surrounded by beautiful, red-brown-green-and-ochre-colored mountains.  They made a breathtaking backdrop to the delicate whites, tans and yellows of the shoreline and the blue-brown of the lake reflecting a robin's egg sky.

Alamo Lake is a flood control and recreational reservoir formed by the Alamo Dam, a 283-foot-high earthen dam built in 1968 by the Army Corps of Engineers. The lake is fed by the Bill Williams River, an intermittent tributary of the Colorado River which, while often dry, keeps the lake filled due to heavy seasonal rains. During extreme flood events, the lake can fill rapidly and once rose 11 feet in a single night due to heavy rains and flooding.  The dam looked imposing as we approached it in our kayaks:

The lake is wide enough and quiet enough to reflect the entire landscape:

Artillery Peak is a dominant presence on the lake:

Today, the winds were so calm, and so few motorboats were present, that we paddled peacefully for our entire visit.

Just another view of the gorgeous purple and red hills surrounding the lake:

In case you wondered, David also enjoyed the paddle!

In fact, he led the charge back to our put-in spot, to find Dusty still waiting patiently for us to return:

After quickly mounting the kayaks on the Jeep, we spent the 43-mile ride back to our campground recalling the beauties of this unassuming little lake in the wilds of the Rawhide Mountain and Arrastra Mountain Wilderness of Arizona.