Saturday morning we headed to Phoenix to spend the day with my parents and sister. Around 11:30 we headed over to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate Mom's 90th birthday, quite an amazing thing! We relaxed and caught up the rest of the day and evening. First thing in the morning we headed back to the campground due to the 24 hour rule, (don't leave your campsite unoccupied more than 24 hours.)

 Monday we did a local hike here in the basin along a 2 track, then we followed a wash for a couple of miles back out to the lake to follow the shoreline home. Tuesday we decided to drive out to hwy 288 towards Young. The road goes around the east end of the lake and over above the north side. We found the Parker Creek trail head at an elevation of 5060' and hiked upward in a tight canyon where very little sunlight shines. The trail was beautiful, with lots of tall pine trees, some balsams, yet we still saw occasional prickly pear cactus as we climbed. As we climbed higher we encountered snow along the trail in various areas. Finally around 6000' we were hiking through a foot of wet snow up the narrow trail. After around an hour and 40 minutes of hiking up the trail at around 6160' I felt we may as well turn back due to the snow depths and still having 900' of elevation to climb. The views in the canyon were great, both directions on the trail. Around noon we finally found a sunny out cropping and stopping for a quick lunch. The warm sunshine felt wonderful on our backs as we ate lunch. 

As we drove home we found several great canyon views along the north side of the lake. We also found some nice stealth campsites that we may utilize in the future.