Ashland Lakes — Friday, Sep. 28, 2018

Extremely peaceful other than all of the Dragonfly orgies going on. The lakes themselves were a little boring to me compared to other lake hikes in the vicinity.  They seem like the type from a dream where you'd see an innocent deer licking up some water on the other side right before it's face melts off to reveal its robot endoskeleton and you wake up in a sweaty panic. Calm, flat glass, just not much as far as the dramatic jagged rock outcroppings sticking up out of the water that I like. There are tons of boards to walk on (miles? of it) which I only managed to almost tear my ACL from slipping like three times instead of the usual twelve, so pretty good overall. They have put in a lot of work putting down mesh wire for us non goat-people. The less traveled side of the lakes were swampy and overgrown, I got about 100 feet in and was soaked and almost lost a boot so I was like "to hell with this". After reading about the hike a little more when I got back, looks like I missed the big payoff as another 1.5 miles further there are a couple of huge waterfalls. Never saw any signs for this, wish I had known. Leave your Bimmers at home, or better yet, just try to make it up this Forest Road! MWAHAHAHA!!!