There would be one more stop in New Hampshire before we started our three hours in Vermont. Near the border where we crossed was a small town called Hanover, home of a well-known college called Dartmouth, which is part of the exclusive Ivy League Group and is very unique for its location in the middle of a New England Forest.
We didn’t even think of it until right after we crossed the Vermont border, but visiting it was sort of a must-do. How many times do you pass by this rural New England town by car on a roadtrip? We’re dozens of miles away from the nearest major city, and travelers don’t come around here too often. This opportunity might not come back to us for decades, and who knows how much this place will have changed by then? It was an opportunity we had to take.
So we pulled off the next exit available and began moving North towards the college town of Hanover. Because we were already hours behind schedule (It was almost 4 PM, and we’d promised to be in Montreal in just an hour; we were still several hours away), we decided just to do a quick 10-minute drive-through of the city before eventually continuing onwards to our next stop. Just like the other places we’d visited in New England, Dartmouth College stayed consistent with that very old, colonial-style brick architecture that was clear throughout the entire campus; while the city itself wasn’t an impressive metropolis, it was definitely a place worth checking out.
The streets and paths were very well-paved, and the nature scene was much better than when we visited Harvard, which was just the day before; I think that’s definitely what made this place the most memorable. It was like a little speck of civilization and knowledge in the middle of a vast, untouched wilderness that surrounded everything.
The vibe of this place was definitely unique, but it wasn’t too different from Concord, New Hampshire. The “middle-of-a-forest” vibe that I got from it was definitely stronger here, although the buildings didn’t stick out as much as they did when in Concord. For that reason, I’ll give this place a:
Rating for Experience #15, Dartmouth College, B+
And why stop here? Now that we’re about to leave New Hampshire for good this time, I might as well make a rating for the experience of just driving through the state without regarding our stops; when I looked out the window, the thing I saw most was forest. The entire place had lots of trees on all sides; they were definitely better than the dead, dull-colored plants in California. The New Englander towns were interesting but besides Concord and Hanover there wasn’t much else that got my attention too much.
Rating for Experience #16, New Hampshire, B-
With that out of the way, it’s time to finally start the Vermont Phase of the drive; a glorious three hours to explore the state of Vermont and everything it has to offer.
The terrain had changed quite a bit from when we were first driving through New Hampshire. Down there, the terrain had been quite flat and boring; you could see nothing but trees and the occasional rural town on both sides, but nothing too interesting. But Vermont is the Green Mountain State, and they gave it that name for good reason; while the place was still very forested with the occasional town, there were a lot more inclines and mountains on both sides of the highway that made looking out at the view far more interesting than it was in New Hampshire.
The place reminded me a bit of when I was driving up from Hanoi to Sapa a few years before. It was several hours in the afternoon through a carpet of mountains covered in flora, stopping at the occasional town to check out some attractions. It wasn’t the complete same, though; the mountains didn’t tower up nearly as high as the ones in Sapa did (and thus, the Sapa view was 10x more interesting), but the attractions and stops we made along the way were a lot more memorable than during the drive up to Sapa.
The first stop we made in Vermont was the state capital, Montpelier. There was a pretty big question between me and Casey that ran through our minds as we drove closer to it; was it going to be better or worse than Vermont? What was the general vibe we were going to get from this place? It certainly wasn’t going to be a normal American city, like most state capitals were. Only a mere 8,000 people live in Montpelier, which isn’t even half of the population of Charlestown. (and remember, Charlestown isn’t a city. It’s only a neighborhood within Boston) Even within Vermont, where very few people live, it’s nowhere close to the largest city. This meant it was going to be extremely rural again; it was going to be one of those small islands of modern civilization in the middle of the wilderness.
It was very similar to Concord in that sense of being in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t realize how much bigger that sense of “being in the middle of the forest” would be. The place’s architecture reminded me quite a bit of Charlestown; that was the first thing that came to my mind when our car first pulled into the city. I began taking pictures as we moved through. I don’t know why, but whenever I look at these sometimes I just get the feeling that it isn’t even in America at all. Every house looked like it could’ve been a hundred years old, and many were many of the red bricks (is that a really New Englander thing?) We drove through the town for a moment (which was laughably small. I saw more forest than buildings here) and were in front of the capital building in a heartbeat.
The quickest way to sum up this experience was that it was like Concord but everything that made it interesting was far more amplified. The building itself looked really similar to New Hampshire;
The whole backdrop of all the nature around created one of the most memorable contrasts between building and nature that I’d seen in my life. The entrance itself was one of the grandest things I’d seen all trip. It’s a lot bigger than it looks in this picture, trust me.
Just like the State Capital Building of New Hampshire, the Vermont Capital Building also had a couple history-related artifacts in the front, turning the entire place into a mini-museum. Outside were a couple of old looking cannons and a statue of Ethan Allen, a major historical figure who helped found the state of Vermont.
And just like in Concord, New Hampshire, there were a lot of other large, historic buildings; there was the Vermont Historical Society, a Pho restaurant (just like Concord. I’m finding Viet food in the middle of the New England Forest?), and Vermont’s Supreme Court. On top of that, there was also a sign in the middle of the grass field that was dedicated to Marquis de Lafayette’s visit to the city all the way back in 1825.
And in parallel to New Hampshire, the place also felt extremely empty. In fact, even more so than in New Hampshire. The entire area in front of the Vermont Capital Building, despite being pretty massive, had absolutely nobody in front of it. The entire building looked abandoned; in fact, there was pretty much nobody on the streets. It was a quiet town in a very rural setting. It was kind of like a New Englander version of Alice In Borderland; the entire place was unusually quiet, and besides our family there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Rating for Experience #17, Montpelier, A
Montpelier and Concord ended up getting the same rating because they’re very similar cities; they both are surrounded by nothing but forest in all direction, they’re relatively quiet cities, and yet they still have some pretty impressive architecture that you wouldn’t expect from a city of their size. If you ever go on a road trip through this part of the US, I highly recommend at least taking a stop to the city. I certainly would’ve explored it more if our family had enough time and they are extremely underrated.
One quick trip to the restroom later and we were once again back on the road, continuing to head west across the state of Vermont. As we did, we were getting closer and closer to Vermont’s largest city called Burlington. By this point, it was already 6PM and we were still hours away from Montreal. We’d promised to be there an hour ago, but all of the stops that me and Casey kept insisting on had delayed us hours. I still wanted to check out Burlington (which I literally had never heard of until the day we drove on this road trip) so our parents eventually agreed that this would be the last stop we made. Afterwards we would continue onwards to Montreal with no more stops. (although Casey would still try his hand at making a few more demands)
The green mountains passed in and out of view; Vermont was a small state, but the drive seemed to go on forever. Dozens of layers of mountains and different towns appear and disappeared from view. The sun was slowly starting to set, and as it did, so did our time in Vermont. We reached the Eastern border, the city of Burlington, at around 6 in the evening. The place itself wasn’t the most impressive thing in the world; it wasn’t surrounded by forest like Montpelier and Concord were. The most interesting thing about this place was that it was near a pretty large lake in the area called Lake Champlain that was the border with the state of New York.
I found the view to be partially disappointing when we pulled up to the lake and me, my brother, and my mom got out of the car to spend a few minutes taking pictures of the view from the dock. I’d been expecting to see the mountains of New York towering over the clouds from a large distance away; it’d be sort of like when I went to Mount Fuji and admired its view from dozens of miles away last year. Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly the case. There was a local in the area who we met on that pier who explained to us that the mountains of New York usually were visible, but because of the relative fog today we weren’t able to get a chance to see it.
Still, the views of the town were pretty amazing. The lake’s waters looked surprisingly calm, and the town itself stayed consistent with that strong rural new Englander vibe that I’d been getting throughout this entire road trip. For my rating of the views on Lake Champlain, I’m sadly going to have to dock off some points for the fog that afternoon. However, having known that there were some pretty large mountains in this place, I’d say I would have to give this place a…
Rating for Experience #18, Lake Champlain, B-
Because everyone needed to use the restroom after all that time in the car, we took a quick stop at a local grocery store to pee. As the adults all took turns going out of the car into the restroom, me and Casey went off on our own for a bit to explore the grocery store. To be honest, I was half-expecting it to be something drastically different from the grocery stores that I saw at home in California. In reality, though, it wasn’t too interesting; the only memorable thing from our explorations in the store was a cardboard cutout of an NBA player that Casey had me take a picture of him next to.
After everyone had taken a quick trip to the toilets, we decided we might as well go and move onto a McDonald’s. We purchased some fries for the entire family to enjoy as we continued the rest of our car ride throughout Vermont, which was starting to come to a close. There were only two hours left, and we were very close to the Canadian Border. As the final stage of the drive to Montreal commenced, me and Casey excited feasted on the large bag of fries that was placed in between us, me looking out at the view outside and Casey focusing hard on Geometry Dash. Our journey to the border was a lot quieter than it had been when we were first heading through New Hampshire, but a couple noteworthy things did happen.
First, Casey began asking over and over for us to visit a local airfield that he was interested in. My parents did consider this, but we were already hours behind schedule and needed to get to Montreal ASAP, so in the end he was denied. He stopped begging once we were past the airfield he was so eager to visit.
Secondly, the strange fog in the sky ended up obscuring the view of the sun, making it look extremely red whenever I looked at it; it was sort of reminiscent of the Japanese flag.
After finishing the bag of fries, we went on for about another hour before finally reaching the border of Canada. This wasn’t my first time at the border of Canada, but it was the first time in nearly a decade. We approached the line of cars and waited for our turn to speak to the border control just a short distance away. After a short conversation with the guy there, we crossed the border and were officially inside the country of Canada. I got a text on my phone. After a lengthy, three-hour drive through the lush, beautiful green mountains of Vermont, we had arrived in Canada.
Welcome to Canada! You get 5 Gigabytes of data in this country with your current phone plan. Please pay more if you want an upgrade. -Enjoy your stay!
Rating for Experience #19, Driving Through Vermont, B+
