Monday — As beautiful as Maine was, we decided to leave and head on town to the green hills of Vermont. We took a route straight across lower Maine and New Hampshire, which was absolutely amazing.

We drove up and down mountains and over rivers on a two-lane state highway. The scenery was right out of a movie. I never thought real places looked like this, but sure enough, people actually are lucky enough to live in these small towns. And of course by lucky, I mean those poor bastards live hours from a real town and have to dig themselves out of 30 feet of snow each winter. I’ll bet it’s pretty when the leaves change though.

So after hours of small towns — and crossing back and forth over the same river seven times — we reached Vermont. I’d always thought it was a hippy haven, but never realized how much so until we passed The Hempest, an all hemp clothing store. Seriously.

When we got to the hotel, which was right on Lake Champlain, the clerk told us to run up to our room so we could watch the sun set over the lake. The view was beautiful. It was worth every Hilton point we spent.

Monday — Burlington was a very pretty town. We strolled up and down the streets downtown. One street — which is closed off to traffic — is lined with small shops and cafes. Kristin was really bummed out when we found the Ben and Jerry’s was closed for remodeling.

We did end up going in to the Old Navy, but mainly just to buy some boxers for me so we could make it through the rest of the trip without doing laundry. If I had wanted to go native, I could have just worn dirty underwear. I was in Vermont, after all, the local hippies would have approved, I’m sure.

A quick point about Vermont, and a reason why we can never live there (besides it being filled with hippies). I have never, in all my travels, seen an uglier people than Vermonters. I’m not talking about the hippies, either, they’re their own thing.

I’m talking about the mouth-breathing, Looney Toon t-shirt-wearing, mongoloid-looking native Vermonters. The whole state is like Kentucky with history. It’s like Alabama without Lynard Skynard. I get the whole Howard Dean thing a little more now, I mean, if you look at him he does kind of have that Corky from Life Goes On meets Al Gore meets Henry Rollins thing going on. Think about it.

So yeah, Vermont is out as a possible place to move. New Hampshire though, I’d go in a heartbeat. But I digress.

So from there, we took the ferry across Lake Champlain and down the New York throughway. Eventually we were back in New York City, living like ballers at the Barclay Intercontinental Hotel in midtown. w00t w00t!

As always, all photos from the honeymoon can be found at flickr.com/josephleenovak