Day 11.229: Echo Lake recap

We hoped to do another hike on day three of our trip, but the weather was not great first thing, so we stopped into the weather museum confusingly named the Mount Washington Observatory Weather Discovery Center but situated on the main street in North Conway. It was a fun museum with lots of interesting weather related exhibits and lots of hands-on fun. Yesterday's photo is of the kids in the hurricane simulator there.

As the weather started to clear out, we headed to Echo Lake State Park where we first set off around the one mile flat loop around the lake, before striking up the steep and challenging Bryce Path to the summit of the smaller of the two ledges that overlook the lake. Spotting an old truck a very long way away from any obvious route to get there, lots of small and hard to photograph frogs and a very impressive millipede (oh yes, did I mention it was steep?!):

The views from the top were great - down to the lake:

and on the other side across the valley to our home for the week (on the side of the mountain we climbed in the clouds on the first day - still in the clouds!):

We decided to walk back down the longer but easier road route rather than attempting the steep trail in reverse. E5N1 and I went on ahead - including some power walking and a little running so that we could have a quick swim in the lake when we made it down.

The mound on the right is the one we climbed - the lake looked perfect:

We had a short but very welcome swim in the water which was the perfect temperature for two hot hikers.

Here is the view back across the valley from out of the back of our apartment building when we made it back. The lake is out of sight but the two ledges are in the middle of the photo in front of the larger ridge: