Love that first view of Mt. Jefferson from the trail:
View of Rock Lake from our campsite:
This little guy was cute, but a HUGE pest and we had to guard our food carefully:
Greg cooled off in Bays Lake, although it was VERY windy:
Usually wind calms down at sunset and it was definitely calmer, but still quite breezy. Here's Scout Lake at sunset:
We were right under a super cool-looking lenticular cloud, which turned red at sunset. It was so big and so close that it was hard to photograph. This is a pano from my iPhone:
Scout Lake in the morning:
We had the most random trail encounter while hiking in on Saturday. We were about a mile from Jefferson Park when we passed a group of six or seven people hiking out. They had a New Seasons apple pie with them and Greg did a double-take. The guy holding the pie immediately asked "You want it?" Greg tried to refuse it, but they insisted we take it, that we'd be doing them a favor by not making them carry it all the way back to the trailhead. So we took it. It garnered us a lot of looks and comments.
As for the new permit system, it worked out pretty well. We made reservations three weeks out and figured if the weather turned out not to be our in favor we were okay eating the six bucks. There's a campsite map on Recreation.gov and you have to pick a specific site when you make your reservation, then camp only in that site with your permit prominently displayed. We were very glad we had printed out the map and brought it with us, because we didn't see it posted either at the trailhead or at Jefferson Park. It can be a bit tricky to navigate the maze of trails around those lakes and get to the right site. There were two backcountry rangers going around checking permits and reminding people to pack out their trash and to not build campfires.
