Monday, September 2nd, 2013. Labor Day. Half Dome/Cloud's Rest Junction to Lower Cathedral Lakes

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.” --John Muir Some of the days...the first campsite is the best one! I was so paranoid when I turned in for the night about the bears in the area.  I did manage to get a good nights sleep and was very happy to see the bear cans right where we left them.  We started putting our cups on top of the can with rocks in them.  The idea is that we would hear a bear knock it off...not sure what we would do then...good thing we never had to find out! We learned very quickly that we were never going to be getting out of camp very early.   I liked getting up, having some coffee, making breakfast, leisurely pack up camp.  Today  we were up at 7am...didn't leave until 10am.  But when you have this view in your camp, it's  hard to leave!  We had two Bambi's today...a little more skittish than the one yesterday  but Mom didn't even bat an eye while they would just run around.    We met a backpacker that stayed near us the night before.  His name was Ed  and he was from San Diego.  He had never backpacked before and decided for this  50th birthday  that he was going to do a Solo John Muir Trail hike.  He only had  14 days to complete it so unfortunately, after today, we would never see him again.   We kept asking about him all along the trail.  We hope he made it!!  We left camp a little after 10am.  We were going to picking up our re-supply tomorrow so  today was a relatively easy day.  We were going to camp at Lower Cathedral Lakes.  I heard  it was absolutely beautiful and was one of the few 'must-do' things on my list.    Decided to have lunch near Sunrise High Sierra Camp.  There was a beautiful  meadow so we had great views!  Lunch was typically a Clif Bar with some dehydrated  apples & peanut butter for me...a Clif Bar and jerky for Jason.    This is Unicorn Peak...the left is from Saturday with the smoke...the right is today.   We are very thankful that the smoke cleared out and that we are able to  enjoy the views of this section of the trail.    Only 4.1 miles to go!!   Well...then another 1/2 mile down to Lower Cathedral Lake.  No idea what is on the left...Echo Peaks is on the right I think.   Cathedral Peaks A view of the trail and Cathedral Peak.   The trail was easy to follow and easy to hike on!  Cathedral Lakes and a Trail Runner  Once again, I don't know for sure but I think this is Columbia Finger.   We made it to Lower Cathedral Lake.  We decided to go around the lake to the right looking for a campsite.  There was a totally awesome campsite--a flat rocky outcrop with a great view of the Lake and Mountain...but since it was the first one we found and it was nearly at the beginning of the lake, we made the mistake of trying to find a better campsite.  BIG mistake.  We ended up walking all the way around the lake and settling on a campsite.  It was still a great campsite but I learned a valuable lesson--if the campsite looks good, just take it.    Not a bad way to end the evening!  Quite a view...  Camp on night 3...Dinner was Lasagna again & it was just as good as the first night. We even did a little laundry tonight! We climbed into the tent around 8:30pm but decided to play a little cribbage.  I had said prior to the hike that I wanted to spend every day at lunch playing a game of cribbage and swimming at a lake.  Due to the last minute change of plans, I haven't gone swimming once and tonight was the first game of cribbage.  I won...  Miles Hiked Today:  11.5   Total Miles Hiked:  41.4     Total JMT Miles Hiked: 17.8 Elevation: 7200 up to 9700 back down to 9300