Whittleton Arch trail

Wednesday
When I got up this morning and looked out the windows through the trees, I could see that the entire valley was filled with mist, while the sun was just catching the very tops of the hills around. It took quite a while to lift, but by the time we’d had breakfast, had packed up, put the sheets in the washer as instructed, and carried our stuff down the 37 steps to the car (!), it was all cleared and another gorgeous clear blue sky sunny day, though quite a bit cooler than the last two days. We returned the keys to the agency, and set out on the trails again, this morning doing the trail to Whittleton Arch, starting from Whittleton campground. It was a very scenic trail, following a stream, but it was also Very muddy in quite a number of places. However, the sight of the arch itself made it worthwhile. It’s not as graceful as some of the arches, but it’s sheer bulk and it’s surroundings make up for it. There is even a waterfall cascading off the cliff to the side, though there wasn’t much water in it today - that would be better to see in Spring, but then I hate to think of the condition of the trail in Spring! However it’s difficult to do the arch justice in a photograph, so I settled on a collage of scenes from the trail and the arch to give an idea of the surroundings. You can see me in my purple fleece in the bottom centre photograph to give an impression of size. We returned to the campground, and since there weren’t many sites occupied, we sat at one of the picnic tables in the sunshine to eat our picnic lunch, before going on to a final shorter (and less muddy!) trail to Silvermine Arch before setting off home. This trail started off nice and level through fairly open forest, but then descended quite steeply, partially thanks to a long flight of steps, (included as extra) into dense stands of mountain laurel. The arch itself was fairly small and ordinary, especially after Whittleton Arch! So all in all, a wonderful birthday getaway - hope you’ve enjoyed coming along too! I’ve also included an extra of the cabin with all its steps!