While we are parked at Falls Campground in the Windy River Mountains of Central Wyoming, we have some great hiking opportunities close by. Because we are so happy to have 50-amp electricity in our Forest Service Campground here, we can be gone all day for long hikes without having to worry about our house batteries. So today we are heading out for a long loop hike to check out some of the mountains lakes in our new neighborhood. Our trail starts a few miles down the road at Brooks Lake. 
Actually, we probably should have started at Brooks Lake, where the parking is easy and the trails are well-defined. But for some reason, the All-Trails app took us up a steep Forest Service Road to a different spot to start today's hike. We're higher in elevation, so this should be a great option, right? Maybe not. We had to do some bushwhacking through a forest with fallen trees, looking for the trail.
When we finally found some semblance of a trail, the bridge over the ravine was a little sketchy. We don't think many people have gone this way.
Then we came to a creek crossing with no bridge, and no way to get across without getting our feet wet. It seemed too early in a very long hike to be hiking all day in wet shoes, so we set about trying to build stepping stones across a pretty deep creek.
Thirty minutes later and after using a lot of energy lifting and carrying rocks, we finally had enough stacked to get us both across the water. Note to self: next time take the maintained hiking trail that starts lower at Brooks Lake. It will use less energy.
After that rough start, we are ready for some smooth hiking as we finally get on the well-maintained trail. We are on a loop hike today, on our way to visit five of the best alpine lakes in this area. Since we've watched some of the Summer Olympics, we've decided to rank these lakes in our new neighborhood. Because we've seen a few mountain lakes in the last 6.5 years of hiking, we feel qualified to do some judging of those five lake as we get to them.
We'll encounter many streams that run through the valley and feed those mountain lakes. But there currently isn't a stream competition in these summer olympics.
The streams also feed the beds of wildflowers that are literally everywhere up here. This bright bloom has a fuzzy center to make sure the pollinators do not miss it.
The lupines are also lovely in the mountains of Wyoming right now. Maybe we should be ranking the wildflowers as well?
The first lake on the score card is Upper Brooks. We'll give this one a 6.2 rating (out of 10 possible) because it is easy to get to and it has a nice mountain view in the distance. But it's a little too open, without that circle of mountain peaks around it that we really like.
It gets extra points for having a nice assortment of floral colors in the flower beds on the shore.
As we climbed up to the edge of the lake, we discovered that we are on the Continental Divide Trail again. We recognize that we are at high elevation whenever we start seeing that familiar Continental Divide marking that we have seen many times before.
The hike today is actually a combination of many different trails, put together to make a lopsided loop with an extra spur or two added. We have just turned off on one of those spurs toward Rainbow Lake, when Denisa spots another flower garden beside a babbling brook. God is the premier gardener with landscaping like this!
We make it to our second lake of the day--Rainbow Lake. We'll give it a nice score for those waterfront flowers,
but subtract points for all the dead trees that ring the lake. This area has really been hit hard by the pine beetles.
We'd give Rainbow Lake a higher score if we saw a bear here. Based on this big pile of fresh scat, a bear has been here recently.
Rainbow Lake was on the verge of a mediocre score, when we saw the line in the water.
With the good camera zoomed in, we could focus on the line. That's when we saw that cute little face.
Wait! There's not just one, but two in the water, and they're doing a synchronized swimming routine just for our entertainment.
We've seen sea otters and river otters, but it looks like these are lake otters. We are taking way too many pictures, but it's almost as if the otters are performing for us.
While they seemed to prefer swimming on their bellies, this one flipped on his back to give us that quintessential otter smile and favorite pose.
The score for Rainbow Lake just went way up with the sighting of these two very friendly otters! That's an 8.4 rating with that very nice wildlife sighting.
When the otters disappeared, we also left Rainbow Lake and headed back out to the meadows. Have we mentioned how beautiful the wildflowers are in the mountains of Wyoming right now?
We were also escorted today by little orange butterflies that were enjoying those wildflowers. Denisa had been trying to get a picture, and she finally succeeded when this group of butterflies found some especially tasty yellow blooms.
They were so enamored with the nectar here that they let Denisa take as many pictures as she wanted.
The loop trail is taking us on the other side of the meadow, and we can now see the majestic mountains that we were hiking right below early this morning. We are seeing a few mosquitoes, but as long as we keep walking they leave us alone. If we stop, they start swarming around us. Mark commented that they are like a personal trainer--always giving you incentive to keep going even when you are tired.
That's when we saw the trail signs that indicated we were approaching the Jade Lakes.
Lower Jade was first, and we had to work hard to get good pictures here. With no mountains close, and almost all the trees dead that surround it, we can only give this lake a 2.6 rating. This lake will definitely not be in contention for a medal.
But it did have a good sitting log on the shore, and we had our picnic lunch here.
We probably should have waited for better lunch views that we would get at Upper Jade Lake--our fourth lake of the day.
Now we have some mountain views, wildflowers on the shore, and the jade color of the lake is stunning.
Upper Jade just got a 8.9 rating, and we feel like we have wandered into another of God's wonders here.
It took another mile or so of hiking, but now we are looping back towards the pickup. We are high above Brooks Lake, and this was our best view of this popular lake. It has a couple of campgrounds, and you can even drive right to the shore of this big lake. But because it is so big and it tends to be windy, we never were interested in kayaking here. It probably won't get a very high score from these two mountain lake judges today.
As we were winding down this hike, we realized that we could see wildflowers every step today--and we've taken quite a few steps. In fact, by the end of the hike we went 10.3 miles.
It's easy to make loops because so many trails criss-cross this area. But we learned early today, that you can have problems with designing your own loop because of the water crossings.
Sure enough, we got to another creek crossing that was too wide and too deep to jump.
We certainly weren't going to back-track a couple miles to get to a bridge. Besides, it felt pretty good to take off those hiking boots and walk across the creek in our bare feet.
By the time we got back to the pickup, we had been hiking 7 hours and 15 minutes, and went up 1,093 feet in elevation. We got to wander all day in God's wonders of wildflowers, butterflies, otters, mountains, and alpine lakes--some of our favorite things. We'll give the gold medal to Upper Jade Lake, and the silver to those cute otters at Rainbow Lake. But we'll rate the whole day as a ten!
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