(c) 2010 Lydia Hinshaw
Between the horses and the trees is the lake. All of it.JACOB LAKE, AZ -- Jacob Lake is a milestone on any trip to or from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It's 45 miles up the road, at the intersection of Arizona 67 and US 89A. At Jacob Lake, you turn left to go to Kanab, St. George, Bryce or Zion, and right to go to Page or, if you're really ambitious, Flagstaff and the rest of Arizona.
Jacob Lake has a mom-and-pop motel with restaurant and gift shop, a gas station, a horseback riding concession, a couple of campgrounds and the Kaibab National Forest Visitor Center.
It takes about 30 seconds to drive past all this stuff.
What I'd been wondering about for nearly two months was the thing that seemed to be missing from Jacob Lake, namely the lake. I'd never seen a sign of it. One day, some tourists at the North Rim asked me if they could go fishing at Jacob Lake.
No idea, I replied. I've never seen it. Don't know if it even exists.
Last Saturday, I drove three employees to Jacob Lake for a horseback riding trip. They were to be on the trail for two hours, which I would have free to explore. I set out down a dirt road toward one of the campgrounds, and shortly came to a left turn with a sign pointing toward the lake.
I was certainly expecting a bit more. Jacob Lake is more like Jacob puddle, well under an acre of farm pond on private property in the middle of somebody's horse-pasture.
The whole thing easily fit into the frame of my point-and-shoot camera, although it doesn't exactly stand out in the pictures I was able to shoot.
A co-worker who is an Arizonan told me that by Arizona standards, Jacob Lake is a pretty large natural lake. It is of course not to be compared with un-natural lakes like Lake Powell, a houseboat freeway created by the Glen Canyon dam.
At the Kaibab NF Visitor Center, I was assured that Jacob Lake was an important source of water for early explorers and settlers traveling through the area. There isn't much water on the Kaibab Plateau.
At the North Rim, our water comes from Roaring Spring, far down in the Grand Canyon.
Jacob Lake has a mom-and-pop motel with restaurant and gift shop, a gas station, a horseback riding concession, a couple of campgrounds and the Kaibab National Forest Visitor Center.
It takes about 30 seconds to drive past all this stuff.
What I'd been wondering about for nearly two months was the thing that seemed to be missing from Jacob Lake, namely the lake. I'd never seen a sign of it. One day, some tourists at the North Rim asked me if they could go fishing at Jacob Lake.
No idea, I replied. I've never seen it. Don't know if it even exists.
Last Saturday, I drove three employees to Jacob Lake for a horseback riding trip. They were to be on the trail for two hours, which I would have free to explore. I set out down a dirt road toward one of the campgrounds, and shortly came to a left turn with a sign pointing toward the lake.
I was certainly expecting a bit more. Jacob Lake is more like Jacob puddle, well under an acre of farm pond on private property in the middle of somebody's horse-pasture.
The whole thing easily fit into the frame of my point-and-shoot camera, although it doesn't exactly stand out in the pictures I was able to shoot.
A co-worker who is an Arizonan told me that by Arizona standards, Jacob Lake is a pretty large natural lake. It is of course not to be compared with un-natural lakes like Lake Powell, a houseboat freeway created by the Glen Canyon dam.
At the Kaibab NF Visitor Center, I was assured that Jacob Lake was an important source of water for early explorers and settlers traveling through the area. There isn't much water on the Kaibab Plateau.
At the North Rim, our water comes from Roaring Spring, far down in the Grand Canyon.
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