Ancient Lakes

After finally finding the right turn off of U-road (White Trail Road) onto 9, (the directions say 7 miles; it should be .7 miles) we proceeded down the road to the staging area. We were only 30-45 minutes behind our projected start time, after driving from north of Seattle. We loaded up the gear, dog, 4 year old and 8 day old (!) and started down the trail. It was about 11am, and the day was already warm, around 70ish. The trail was dry and dusty, and in good condition. There were some wildflowers out, mostly yellows and purplish white flowers. After hiking roughly 55 minutes or so, we came upon Lake Susan. We saw the other 3 lakes just ahead, so we forged on to investigate, as this was our first time in the area. I let the dog off his leash, as I was a bit nervous to let him roam free in snake country, but as it turned out, he did just fine, and loved it:) It was noon on Friday, and we only came across 2 horse riders, and 4 day hikers. Since we were the first to overnight, we marched all the way up the trail to the campsite on the top of the hill, overlooking all three lakes. There is a nicely built fireplace and "kitchen" area. If you can grab that site, I'd highly recommend it. We then dropped pack and dayhiked for the rest of the afternoon, with some "swimming" and fishing in there as well. The evening was wonderful. Beautiful sunset, mild temperatures in the upper 40's to lower 50's, and a tolerable amount of bugs.
The next morning was very peaceful, and we got up early to go check out the falls that we had not been able to the day prior. We made it about halfway to the falls after rockhopping/hugging a HUGE boulder, but were stopped farther up the "trail" by the sheer volume and steepness of the rock shales. (Had we not had our 4 year old daughter and 8 day old son, my wife and I would have had no trouble scaling the rocks to access the falls). We took some pictures and headed back to our camp. Having planned ahead, we had packed up camp, so all we had to do was load up our packs and hike out. We lucked out on our timing, because we met one group of boyscouts camped up the trail (they must have come in later that first night) as well as another group just leaving the staging area on their way in! This is a very beautiful and easy hike, and VERY worthwhile!!