There a lot of really good options you can just park your car at. You can also get pretty far up the trail in a standard car. I drove a Subaru Impreza (very slow) and it did great.

There is a nice creek that feeds into the lake at the bottom. There are a lot of sites going along this.

Like other places. You might hear a lot quads/atvs in the morning and pretty much all day long.

To get to the summit you definitely need a 4 wheeler. There were spots that gave our 4Runner some issues. Mostly lifted jeeps or beaters up there.