Vermont is beautiful, I’ll grant you but a bit touristy and overated….try most of upstate NY, a best kept secret, especially in the fall. Upstate NY has much more land area, varied regions, quiet old farms that nature has reclaimed...more mountains and hilly plateaus and the rich dark soiled potato growing regions in the Mohawk valley around the old erie and NY state barge canals. How about great lakes regional wineries and those of the finger lakes?...I think NY state even produces superior maple syrup to that of Canada or Vermont! It’s only downside....it’s economy and culture is being destroyed by NYC/downstate tax and spend liberals. I curse the Cuomo family....even the old Italian mobs would have run NY State better than the what the Liberals have done!
I have been lucky enough to travel by road over many parts of this country, and one of the things I have noticed, is there is a distinct change going from state to state in many places where you think there wouldn’t be.
Two states are in the same geographical area, and should be the same, but...they just aren’t. It strikes me as odd, but it is true.
For example, I went on a road trip a few years back because I was going to lose vacation time, and my wife didn’t have any, so...I jumped in my car, drove down from New England to Kentucky with the goal of driving out to the Four Corners Monument in Utah. Just made it up as I went along, no real plan.
In Kentucky, though, I realized I wouldn’t make it. I simply didn’t have enough time. So I thought “I’ve never been to Nebraska before. Where can I go and just closed my eyes and put my finger on a map. (My finger landed on a town that was known because a homosexual was murdered there by two guys, Humboldt, and I picked again and landed on Tecumseh, named that by the citizens who were offended that the Army officer who killed Tecumseh had named the town after his mistress, so they voted to change it to Tecumseh!)
Anyway, leaving Missouri and entering Nebraska was, to me like night and day. Nebraska just seemed more...blue collar, work oriented. Couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was no doubt it was a cultural change in nearly every way at the state line.
And that is how it is to me up in New England. When you leave Massachusetts, you KNOW you are in New Hampshire. It LOOKS different. And when you leave New Hampshire and enter Vermont, again it looks completely different. The roads themselves look different. The farms, signs, everything just seems...different when you cross that state line.
And I noticed the when I left Vermont and entered New York. It was less...charming, and a bit grittier and more businesslike. The buildings, everything just looks and feels different.
I do agree it is an attractive area (upstate)...my wife and I drove up to Lake Placid a few years back in February, and there was a long stretch where we didn’t see any other cars for what felt like an hour. We came around a corner on the highway and were confronted by the vision of a 18 wheeler that had lost control, gone off the road, slid down the icy snow covered median on it side, and came to rest. It looked undamaged except that it was on its side, and the front windows of the cab were both gone.
It looked like they planned to just leave it there until spring...it was totally desolate and odd looking to see!