Peter Seward shares the Adirondack Daily Enterprise in Rajasthan, India, on the edge of the Thar desert. This picture won first place in the enterprise’s 2018 Vacation Photo Contest. (Photo provided — Karen Davidson)

Technically, the first day of spring, the Vernal Equinox, was a week-and-a-half ago. Hah! Winter’s cold and snow have hung on, and many people are itching to get out of town, preferably in a southerly direction.

School spring break is a good time to do that. North Country Community College and Paul Smith’s College had their breaks in March, but for the local K-12 schools, break is imminent. Here’s a quick summary:

¯ Saranac Lake and Lake Placid schools start their two-week spring breaks a week from today, April 8-19.

¯ Tupper Lake schools start their week-and-a-half break two days later, April 10-19.

¯ Keene Central School starts its break two days after Tupper Lake, April 12-19.

¯ AuSable Valley schools have Easter week plus the Monday after Easter, April 15-22.

¯ Long Lake has the latest break of all, starting on Holy Thursday and lasting the whole week after Easter, April 18-26.

If you are gearing up to leave town for a spell, we send you off with our warmest wishes and this reminder: Be sure you pack an issue of the Enterprise in your luggage, along with a camera.

Then put that paper to good use. At some fun moment of your vacation, have a picture taken of you displaying it. Make sure it’s in an interesting setting so viewers can tell you really went somewhere. Get creative; have fun with it.

Then submit it to the Enterprise Vacation Photo Contest, an annual Tri-Lakes tradition since the early 1990s.

Our staff will pick three contest winners based on originality, locale and photo quality, and those winners will get Enterprise subscriptions as prizes: three months for third place, six months for second and one year for first.

In May and June, we’ll print as many photos as possible in the paper. We’ll start on Saturday, May 19 with the three contest winners: first, second and third place.

Here are the guidelines:

¯ The deadline for us to receive photo entries will be Wednesday, May 8. That gives you a whole month after spring break ends. You don’t have to wait until the last minute, either.

¯ It doesn’t have to be from spring break; you’re welcome to submit photos from other vacations within the last 12 months, as long as the Enterprise is in them.

¯ We ask that each household submit no more than one photo.

¯ If your photos are digital, please email them to our sports/features editor, Morgan Ryan, at sports@adirondackdailyenterprise.com. Keep in mind that we can’t print low-resolution photos, so please don’t compress them. Before you start shooting, it’s a good idea to make sure your camera is set to take large photos.

¯ If you only have your photo in a hard copy, either drop it off at our office (54 Broadway, Saranac Lake) or mail it to Vacation Photo Contest, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, P.O. Box 318, Saranac Lake, NY 12983. If you want your hard copy returned, please say so in writing and include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with your entry; we will mail it back to you when we’re done.

¯ Include your name, phone number, email address and a caption — a brief description of who and what are in the photo, where they are, and the name and hometown of any person pictured.

We’ll publish the three winning pictures on Saturday, May 18, and then run the rest of the submissions on several subsequent Saturdays. We’ll also post each week’s photos on our website under the North Country Living category. Access it by clicking “Life” on the menu across the top of our website.

We hope all you Adirondack friends and neighbors have wonderful vacations. We, and your fellow readers, are aching to see where you went.