The geological features of the Crawford Notch in the White Mountain Range of New Hampshire are impressive enough, but not quite as spectacular as the views of the Franconia Notch, although over the years gone past we spent ample time on an annual basis, exploring both in our ascents of the various mountains contained within that quite wonderful landscape.

Of late, we've spent far more time in and around the Franconia Notch, since where we have been wont to stay, renting a cottage from its owners, handy to the Waterville Valley and the climbing/trail opportunities there - requiring a far more modest physical effort on our elderly part - is closer to Franconia.

But since we drove that way to enjoy looking at the exquisitely beautiful Sabbaday Falls, we went on further to do a modest trail located just off a lake that boasted picnic facilities, where a bridge took us to a two-and-a-half-mile-long trail which we had never been on, previously.

It looked promising at first, veering off toward the mountains from the lake site, but it soon became evident it wasn't going off on too much of a tangent. There was no rise whatever, it seemed to almost skirt the Notch highway, the surrounding forest was juvenile in growth, the understory nothing to be enthusiastic about with the exception of a group of wildflowers I couldn't identify which were quite beautiful.

This turned out to be the least attractive by far, of the trails we took this year, although once out of the forest again, and back where we started, at the lake, under the brow of the mountains standing grandly before it, the more immediate scenery more than made up for the disappointment of the hiking trail.