The weekend of 28 Aug 10, Tracy and I decided to try our luck with Naturalist Basin (Google

Map).  We had tried to hike here a couple of times in the spring, but there was always too

much snow.  I didn't want to hike it in the summer, because it's a very crowded trail.  The

forecast was calling for storms this weekend, though, and I was hoping it was late enough in

the year to keep the crowds back.  Well, we got to the trailhead, and there were close to 20

cars there.  I almost called it off.  But Tracy convinced me to give it a shot, so we headed in.

We actually saw very few people.  I'm not even sure where all those people from the trailhead

were, but we didn't see very many at all.  In fact, we saw two groups leaving, and after that we

only saw two couples that were in the basin.  We camped at Evermann Lake, and had the

whole lake all to ourselves.

The hike was very easy, and the basin was pretty, but it wasn't anything spectacular by Uinta

standards.  Basically, it looked like about any other basin in the Uintas, we thought.  I'm sure

it's popular because of how close the trailhead is to Salt Lake, how easy it is to get to the

trailhead, and how easy the trail was.  I'm glad we did the hike so I can mark it off the list, but it

wasn't anything worth risking the people for future hikes.  On the plus side, while the forecast

kept people away, it stormed all around us, but it never hit us!