Expedition: Retirement

Our next plan was to visit the waterfalls at Diana's Baths and hike at Echo Lake State Park, before continuing down the Saco River valley to see the covered bridges in Conway. Diana's Baths is a series of small waterfalls with several nice pools that are apparently quite popular for swimming in the hot summer months. The site was used for a water powered sawmill for many decades, and the remains of the foundations are still visible at the edge of the stream at the bottom of the falls. The path from the parking area to the falls is relatively flat and smooth, so that this visit was more of a walk than a hike, but the waterfalls here were nice, and you could walk out on the rocks right up to the various falls. While it wasn't as crowded as it apparently gets in the summer, there were still plenty of people here, enjoying the beautiful weather and taking in the falls.From here, it was a short drive to Echo Lake State Park (not to be confused with the Echo Lake located about 40 miles away in Franconia Notch State Park). Here, our plan was to hike around the lake and up to the top of Cathedral Ledge to take in the view of the valley. The first part of the hike was flat as we worked our way around the lake and shortly after we turned off the loop trail we found the remains of an abandoned car sitting just off the trail in the woods. After passing the turn off for the trail to the nearby Whitehorse Ledge, the trail to Cathedral Ledge started to climb, steeply at times. The trail was less than ideally marked in this section, and several times we had to stop and look around for the blaze marks to figure out which way we were supposed to go. Eventually, we made it to the top and enjoyed the views of the valley and the increasingly colorful foliage. We also got a lovely view back down to Echo Lake, where we started our hike. As we were hiking up, we had met another couple that was also making their way up to the ledge. Once at the top, we had a nice conversation with them, discovering that they were from London and were in the midst of a two week long holiday to New England.As we began our return to Echo Lake, we decided that we were up to a longer hike, so we decided to take the trail up to the adjacent Whitehorse Ledge, which looped around and would also return us to Echo Lake. This would about double our hiking distance, and would mean another climb, but it was a beautiful day for hiking. This climb wasn't quite as steep, and when we reached the top, we decided to eat our lunch while enjoying the views. Then it was time to work our way back down and around to get back to Echo Lake, where we finished our loop around the lake and eventually returned to the parking lot and our car. By this time, it was getting to be late afternoon, and we decided to end our day a little earlier, so we skipped the covered bridges and returned back to our accommodations.