Heading back to the Franconia Notch for our chosen day-trip, the views from the highway are spectacular approaching the Notch, with the mountains looming over the landscape, some of which we have climbed to reach their summits, none more difficult at the Notch and rewarding than Mount Lafayette. The first time we attempted Lafayette was when our three children were pre-teens. We got as far as the prominence of its Eagle-Cliff lookout then turned back. We hardly knew what we were doing, but weren't lacking enthusiasm.

Eventually we did venture onto that 5,260-foot mountain again and persevered, reaching the Greenleaf Hut, grateful for tea there, saw pitcher plants in the small pond beyond it, and went on to achieve the summit, marvelling at signage advising climbers to shelter behind short boulders lining the way if high winds erupted. It was, for us, one foot after another at that point. We went on to climb Mount Clinton and Little Haystack and Cannon Mountain and Indian Head in succeeding years, as well as many mountains at Crawford Notch.

Now, so many years later, we're happy enough to just clamber up the trail at the Basin. Which was where we parked, and set off with our little dogs to view that site yet again, after so many countless times in the past. We thought since it was a weekday and we were avoiding the weekend, we wouldn't see many people there, but as usual since it was June, there were plenty of people taking in the marvellous landscape.

Just as well, one supposes, that not too many commit to going on further than the Basin itself, heading toward the trail we usually take. We did, on this occasion, see for the first time a family, adults with their four teen-age children, who had packed along with them swimsuits and halfway up the trail, before it switches to the opposite side and on up to a trail leading to a mountain lake we'd taken decades ago, they were all sliding down the flat granite where the mountain stream flows down into the Basin and then on into the Pemigewassat River.

The trail is exceedingly worn from all the boots that have traversed it over the years; tree roots and rocks are prominent, criss-crossing the trail. Aside from the main trail, there's another one running closer to the granite slopes themselves. When we were all much, much  younger, we and our children used to hoist ourselves over the various granite shelves and following the mountain stream upward rather than take either of the trails.

A huge old pine that once stood beside one of the many cascades where our older son had posed for a photograph, had long since succumbed to age and plunged across the rockface decades ago. Each time we return, we see the decaying old trunk is still there, as it was still, this time.

Once we'd reached the plateau after hiking a short while, where we thought we'd sit awhile, we made ourselves comfortable on a natural outcropping for a sofa, treated our little dogs to dog biscuits and water, and took photographs, then just sat observing the landscape, noting the tenacity of the trees hanging over the rockface, the stream relentlessly racing down.

It was a hot and humid day, as it usually happens to be when we're there. This spring the excess of rainfall made it even more so, the surrounding forest steeped in water, still unable to absorb it all. And since blackflies breed in running water there was no lack of them there. But the grandeur of the mountain backdrop, the flourishing trees, the sound of the water making its way over the granite all added up to another layer of outdoor experiences for us that we so much enjoy.