The third day of our stay at the rental cottage turned out rather wet. The rain was unrelenting, not affording us the opportunity for even a short walk anywhere. So we thought it as good a day as any to undertake the long drive to Antique Alley, in the southern part of New Hampshire. Our hike the day before at Smarts Brook had taken us about three and a half hours, so we felt good and exercised, refreshed from our long drive of the day before, from home to the cottage, and off we set for a day's excursion poking about in antique shops.

Riley had done very well on the day's trek at Smarts Brook and we figured he wouldn't mind sleeping off the exertions through yet another drive. The drive is long but we were relaxed and found plenty to talk about on the way there. Traffic moved well. The rain splatted heavily against the rooftop and the windshield, threatening to obliterate visibility completely at times. When we could sight the mountains we passed on our way, their summits were encased in heavy cloud cover, and we could just make out the wisps of mist rising white and opaque in the valleys.

We eventually visited one group shop after another after our hour's drive had taken us to our destination. Shops where we had in the past seen objects that fit our criteria, but no longer do. Providing entertainment, at the very least, but not too much else. The thing about hunting for antiques and objets d'art, though, is that you never know what you might happen to come across. We bargained with ourselves that one particular dealer in the jumble of junk-meisters from whom we'd bought 19th-Century paintings from Britain in the past might have some decent offerings. But we learned that business had been so bad he found it useless to continue and had withdrawn his desirable objects, re-locating elsewhere.

One of the stalls, though, had a pair of oriental (Chinese) Ancestor Portraits, and I'd wanted us to acquire a pair for an awfully long time. The price was right, the paintings satisfied our aesthetic and we bought them. In one of the group shops where a central desk hosts whoever happens to be on duty for sales at any given time, we came across someone who recognized us; he always seems to, even though we appear for an hour one day each year. He enjoys buttonholing us to talk politics.

And this time bemoaned the fact that Canada seems no better than his home country when it comes to stupid, corrupt politicians, citing the recent imbroglio about Toronto's mayor Rob Ford. One of those rare Americans who keeps abreast of things happening outside the U.S. Though truth to tell, a mayor being implicated in a crack cocaine video does make news.

Driving back to the cottage was pleasant, and seemed shorter than the drive away from it. We'd picked up a copy of the Boston Globe on our way and that would satisfy our reading material for the evening, since though the cottage hosts a very large television set in the living room and there's a good number of channels to select from, we rarely used it.

We'd been skunked out of a hike, to be sure, but we'd scored nicely with the two paintings, and felt pretty good about that. And then, of course, there was always tomorrow with the prospect of improved weather conditions enabling us to get on with our main purpose for the trip; hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire.