We set out for our week away in New Hampshire on the very day of our 58th wedding anniversary. Before we were fully awake that morning, there was a call to wish us a happy anniversary. No one else other than our granddaughter remembers that date, and she was calling from her cellphone on her schoolbus en route to her high school, last Wednesday.

Because we speak at length every day, I know she'll miss our conversations. We do continue to speak almost every day while we're in New Hampshire, but the conversations tend to be very short, and I am unable, consequently, to discuss the vital matter of her homework assignments with her at length; she likes me to vet most of her essays with her. I absolutely detest texting, and though I did do some of it last year, I prefer to abstain completely.

We had intended to cross into the United States using a different route this time, bypassing Montreal, but since we ran into some construction at the outset, necessitating a long detour, we decided ultimately otherwise, and ran the usual gauntlet through Montreal. American Border Service is always a drag; last year we had two clementines which were grown in Florida, but conveyed back over the border by us in our lunch bucket where we intended to eat them at a courtesy rest and tourism spot about three miles from the border post, confiscated by a nasty, threatening border officer.

We had better luck this time around, a polite and accommodating novice. Despite which we had eaten the two offending pieces of fruit just before reaching the border. The rest stop is always a pleasant experience, it overlooks the Green Mountains of Vermont, and because of its height, it is always windy and cool. Specimen oak trees grow there to give shade and a pleasant aspect, a very appreciated welcome.

We drove through the spectacular Franconia Notch, making visual greetings with old friends. Our first climb there many years ago was to Eagle's Cliff on the way to Mount Lafayette, and years later we climbed Lafayette as a family, with our three then-teen children. A long, laborious, difficult clamber full of surprises and wonderful landscapes, not the least of which was the march of mountain tops that stretched as far as the eye could see, from the windy top of the mountain.

At age 76 we're beyond ascending such demanding peaks, but we think about those we did manage to climb, like Little Haystack, Eisenhower, Clinton, Moosilauki, Indianhead and others, including steeply demanding mountain trails that led to outlooks offering us spectacular sights of nature's diversity and geological mastery of our little part of the universe.

The most ambitious physically we could anticipate this time around was what we accomplished with relative ease and much enjoyment; a 3-1/2-hour hike on Smarts Brook Trail in the Waterville Valley, and a moderately easy clamber to the top of Rattlesnake Mountain on another day. And in between a few other more modest hikes. Did I mention that we had but one sunny day in that week? That the rain was incessant, but didn't stop us from doing whatever we planned.

Our foray up to the Sabbaday Falls, a not-to-miss spectacular landscape, was accomplished in pouring rain. We know enough about the area to always pack along rain gear, and even a little raincoat for our little dog. It works, every time.