Our trip to Lyman Lake State Park was an easy 99 miles. All was uneventful except for the Big Buck Excitement. Standing off to the side of a road was a huge bull elk. At first, I thought he was a statue outside of a Cabela’s store, but then the statue moved, looked at our motorhome, and then bounded across the road in front of us escaping to the other side. The dogs thought it was the best show ever as they barked, howled, and jumped up and down on the dash.



Lyman Lake State Park is 1,200 acres at 6,000 feet. It was created by damming the Little Colorado River and is a big boating lake nine miles from the town of Saint Johns. Here is a shot of the park taken from one of the many trails.





Gorgeous weather throughout or stay and along with the park itself, many places nearby for hiking, birding, and viewing great scenery, including hieroglyphs and Anasazi ruins.



Here is a jackrabbit the size of a pony, a tarantula hawk found in our campsite (Jan’s hand is there to show the size of this dude), and a pai stripe whiptail snake. And, yes, the tarantula hawk preys on tarantulas.







Once again, our hummer feeder brought in new customers. Here are three black-chinned hummers who visited daily.







Lots of other birds including Canada geese, mountain bluebirds, blue grosbeak, Say’s phoebe, house sparrows, common raven (lots of these big black guys everywhere), also loggerhead shrike, and yellow-headed blackbird.

















Finally, while we were out hiking, Janny spotted a belted kingfisher from a distance having lunch, and I took several photos of him in action. I was happy to see when editing on the computer that another bird was in the picture—check out the black phoebe on the left.



Lyman Lake State Park and the surrounding area is just awesome.

Tags: Lyman Lake State Park, Arizona, Bird photography, Nature Photography, Wildlife photography, Hieroglyphs, Anasazi, Hiking, Hummingbirds, Little Colorado River, St. Johns