I had the recent opportunity to spend 3 days camping up in Duck Creek Village area. It’s a really beautiful country. There are a few lakes nearby, Navajo Lake, Duck Creek Pond, Aspen-Mirror Lake are the close lakes to Duck Creek and Panguitch lake is about a 30 min drive north. All of these lakes have great trout fishing. There are plenty of hiking paths and trails to explore and if you like geocaching there are hundreds of geocache locations all over the place to find.
Day 1: Aspen-Mirror Lake & Mammoth Cave
Aspen-Mirror Lake isn’t a very big, its pretty small for a lake, but the scenery is beautiful. Did some mid-day fishing, the lake was calm, but I didn’t catch anything. I was told that you always catch something from this lake. There was even an old gentleman that said that he always catches something, but today neither myself, the older man, or anyone as far as I saw, caught anything in that lake. The older man said perhaps they haven’t stalked it yet. Better luck next time. I also went to a lava tube cave called Mammoth Cave. It is pretty amazing. It’s pitch black, so you have to take a flashlight. It’s also a place that bats will use during the winter months to hibernate, during that time it’s closed off.
Day 2: Cascade Falls Hike & Navajo Lake
The hike to Cascade Falls was nice. It was an easy hike, about a half mile hike to the falls. The trail was interesting, it had railroad ties built into the ground for a more sturdier path and also provided steps at different sections. There were parts of the path that had small streams running over the path and another section that had a mini bridge that went over another stream. There was a section of the mountain carved out for the path to go through, which had a bench for people to take a rest if they needed and to enjoy the outlook view over the valley of pine trees. (See additional images below). I also spent the afternoon at Navajo lake. Didn’t catch anything there as well. It was windy in the afternoon which made for rough waters.
Day 3: Ice Cave & Panguitch Lake
gNot too far from my camp there is an Ice Cave, which was basically a large natural freezer. The temperature dropped quite a few degrees in this cave. There was even snow and ice still in the cave from the previous winter. I was told it was a natural place pioneers would store goods that needed to be kept cold all summer long. I can see why, it was probably about 35-40 degrees in that cave. Later that evening I went up to Panguitch lake which was about a 30 minute drive from Duck Creek Village. It is a much larger lake than the other lakes I went to. I went late in the evening and as you can see from the image, it was overcast and a storm was rolling in. Didn’t get to spend as much time as I liked in this area due to the weather.
