I made this list of reasons I love Vermont months and months ago, but never published it:

1. No billboards. I always forget this until we go somewhere else, and I remember how very much I hate billboards.
2. Even the greasiest diners serve real maple syrup, and you don't have to ask for it specially.
3. It's an uppity sort of place. Nobody pays attention to us, but/and we do shit like indict the president anyway. And threaten to secede, and sort of mean it.
4. Bacon.
5. Wherever you are in the state, you can get to a hiking trail within half an hour. If you don't require a trail and are willing to do some benign trespassing, you can usually get to woods within five minutes.
6. The best ice cream in the world. Really. And I don't mean Ben & Jerry's, either.
7. If you are on a dirt road, every person who drives by will wave; every person you pass walking on a dirt road will say hello.

I would like now to add:

8. Total strangers help push your car up the hill when it snows twelve inches in five hours and the plow skips your street and then,
9. Other total strangers let you park in their driveway overnight when it becomes obvious that even with the help of two high-school Nordic-ski-team boys and their mother, the car is not going to make it all the way, and then,
10. When you go back to get your car in the morning, the total stranger will have shoveled it clear and scraped off the windows.