16 June 2009, Waterville Valley, N.H.

Heavily overcast again, when we left in the morning. Packing mostly accomplished the night before. No rush to leave, although there was plenty of last-minute activity, mostly Irving loading up the car, as I ensured we'd forgotten nothing and prepared our separate Thermos containers of tea and coffee, and put together our 'brunch'; egg salad sandwiches for him, peanut butter and pear jam for me. Bananas and nectarines completed the movable feast.

A moderate wind in evidence, to shift around the clouds. Not enough force there in the wind to nudge the car as we'd experienced a week earlier. We passed the gas station, convenience store where we would stop each morning to pick up the Boston Globe. Traffic light, as it would be, until we'd gain the outskirts of Montreal.

The highways we take, inter-state, between New Hampshire and Vermont, are wide, smooth and bereft of significant use. The wide panoramic views we enjoy are breathtakingly spectacular. The encircling mountain heights, the deep forested green marching up hillsides, mist rising sporadically from valleys below. Clouds shifting, changing shape as they billow and spread, a dark layer above lighter wafting below present their own striking heavenly panorama.

Hawks, and turkey vultures crest effortlessly, gliding on the upper-air currents. Crows relentlessly beset by angry blackbirds, desperately attempt to evade their significantly smaller tormentors, fuelled by the pique of territoriality.

On the medians luxuriant patches of bright purple, pink, and mauve lupines thrive. Along with the white of daisies, sun-bright buttercups. Startling-pink clover, orange and also yellow hawkweed complete nature's late-spring conceit.

We pass small towns, with their community fairgrounds, their churches and gas stations popping up here and there along the way, asserting humanity's need to bisect nature's landscape with grey ribbons of concrete. Farms march up gently sloped hillsides, their orderly planted fields and silos beside old barns setting the stage for cattle grazing contentedly in fields as we slip by.

When we reached the border we were met by a Canada Border agent whose demeanor was professional without indulging in the kind of obnoxious officiousness we're assaulted by through the affected mannerisms of U.S. agents. The list that Irving always remembers to painstakingly compile, with receipts appended detailing our purchases never fails to expedite our passage. He was, after all, a customs agent himself, back in the misty time of his early employment with the federal government.

And, in a peculiar reversal of weather, the sky was increasingly devoid of clouds, blue appearing with astonishing rapidity, reflecting our experience precisely one week earlier when massive rainfall dissolved into calm overcast as we crossed into the States. Oddly, on our return home neighbours informed us that the entire week of our absence was marked by inordinately cool weather, but dry, with ample sun. While we had experienced day after day in the White Mountains, of incessant rain.

The rest stop we used just over the Stanstead border crossing was every bit as welcome, as well tended and accoutered for the comfort of travellers as its Vermont counterpart. The sole exception being Quebec does not see the necessity of extending the courtesy of English translations, in contrast to Vermont's efforts on behalf of travellers.