Last Thoughts on Vermont and New Hampshire

Time might have passed for a post-mortem on this trip, but not in my opinion.

I have heard San Francisco called the most European of American cities. Having never gone beyond the airport, I can believe that.

As for states, I have to call Vermont and New Hampshire the most European of American states. Small places with large mountains, fiercely independent people and drastically different spirits, the two don't share much more than climate, mountains and the river separating them. The towns are small but possess histories twice as long as most U.S. settlements.

Yet I cannot shake either. Almost daily I see the gold dome of Montpelier wedged beneath the Green Mountains but soaring above the Winooski River. We can attribute that to my strange affinity for centers of government and never visiting Concord. The converted mills of Manchester closed out the adventure

Two months later, I am still stricken with Northern New England Fever. Five days and 1,000 miles did not come close to offering a cure.

I look at how much ground we covered in Vermont, and barely covered any of it. Those big mountains contained hamlets I can now only imagine. I look to its northern lands like St. Albans and the Lake Champlain islands. We only grazed the Northeast Kingdom, the state's rural northeast. My mother recommended the Grandma Moses Museum in Bennington. Two hours roundtrip from Rutland, as far southeast as we traveled, Bennington pushed the trip too far on a different course.

Maybe the speed impacted me; off the interstate, 55 mph was rarely approached, and the steady stream of small towns made 25 mph and 35 mph far more common.

New Hampshire was lonelier, traveling the mountain highways and the winding routes that traversed the White Mountain National Forest. For its lonely stretches, it also welcomed us, with friendly folks in all corners and an old English major friend across the river in Lebanon. The Bretton Woods region, lying in the umbrage of Mount Washington, could be ripped out of the Alps.

Maine didn't get a full pass. Hell, it received the most minimal touch imaginable, I crossed the Piscatagua River via I-95 and returned directly. When Maine receives the full treatment, possibly sometime in 2012, Vermont and New Hampshire will earn a welcome encore.