On the last day of our New Hampshire trip that would enable us to take our pleasure on a fall hike on a trail we'd never been to before in our many years of hiking in the White Mountain range, we decided on yet another obscure trail far from the interests of those interested in serious mountain hiking.

We travelled along yet another unpaved road but it was a much more pleasant and easier road to drive than the one the day before. Having consulted the White Mountain guide, my husband opted for the Tripoli Road and thought we might try the Echo Lake trail. Which necessitated another long, hairpin-turning tertiary mountain road, but we were game to give it a try.

The thing with these more obscure trails is that they're not marked and don't necessarily have any signage identifying them. So we more or less had to play it by ear, and doing it that way we ended up making decisions that turned out to be misleading. As when we stopped at a likely looking spot, a gated 'entrance' to the forest that was obviously a wide track that we thought would lead to the trail. We parked and embarked.

We were surrounded by glorious autumn woods, brilliant in the sun, despite occasional dark clouds drifting by. The track did narrow somewhat to resemble a woodland trail, and then suddenly it opened up to a shrub-dusted field with no sign of a continuation to be seen. Disappointed, we turned back. We'd been on the trail for perhaps a half-hour before it petered out; obviously it was a fire-road. But while hiking on it we viewed lovely landscapes, so no regrets.

Driving on, we passed by several other 'gates' resembling the first false one we'd stopped at and drove on until we finally came to one that we were certain was what we were looking for, parked and set off with our two little dogs. This definitely was the trail, we assured ourselves, and doubtless it was. After a half-hour of forest landscape that didn't come close to the beauty of the one we'd left behind, there was a fork.

We don't argue too often about which way to go, but this time we didn't agree; I opted to continue straight ahead, my husband, recalling details of what he'd read, insisted we turn onto the forked-off  trail, and so we did, soon coming to a small open area with a hump of stones built into an open fireplace. At that juncture we should have turned back, but didn't, continuing to follow a fainter trail that turned sharply left and so did we. As we proceeded the 'trail' became less and less convincing and soon became heavily littered with rocks and wet pools and we finally realized we'd gone off-trail.

Deciding to return whence we'd come, we turned back, then made a wrong decision yet again, turning too soon, and found ourselves floundering deep in uneven, rocky ground heavily interspersed with bracken. We were bushwhacking and getting pretty tired, and so were Jackie and Jillie. We turned back once again to access the initial main false trail and eventually found our way out, but not before visions of being 'lost' in the wilderness hit our consciousness simultaneously, needing no verbal communication to affirm we were both getting more than a little worried.

Suffice to say we found our way out, then resumed hiking in the direction we should never have left to begin with. And so continued our hike for another hour, finding that the forest was attractive but the area simply wasn't as interesting and beautiful as those we'd already experienced. And since we were feeling a bit bushed, we decided it was time to call it a day, and so we did.

We'd considered ourselves somewhat seasoned hikers, and this experience simply served to demonstrate that in unfamiliar territory, despite reading all the relevant materials and depending on previous such hikes for guidance, it's not that difficult to go astray.