The Great American Reach Around - New England & Canada

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

New Hampshire is one of two states (along with neighbor Vermont) that occasionally makes little baby noises about leaving the Union. Both New Hampshire and Vermont are fiercely independent and proud states with histories that reach back to the early days of the 17th century.

New Hampshire is also host to the Free State Project. Begun in 2003, the project's plan was to settle New Hampshire with 20,000 libertarians and change its political climate. So far it has proved to be a resounding success, with almost 200 libertarians moving to the state amid resentment from the locals who dislike interference from outsiders.

Sometimes known as a "South Park Republican", a libertarian is what happens when a liberal becomes too rich and self-centered - or too obsessed with guns - to care about anything else. Every year they toy briefly with voting for a Libertarian Party candidate and then they realize that the candidate is the guy that lives in the mountains and eats cats, so they compromise 90% of their stated beliefs to vote for a Republican. There are approximately 500 libertarian voters in the United States, yet there are strangely almost five million libertarians on the Something Awful Forums.

Portsmouth is an idyllic city on the Atlantic coast of New Hampshire that dates back to the earliest colonial days of North America. About half of the structures in Portsmouth are either museums or they are considered historic and have little plaques next to the door. It's the sort of town where you wouldn't be surprised to see a sailor in a rain coat with a corncob pipe clenched between his teeth walking out of a scented candle store.

Everyone in Portsmouth is white, providing visitors the rare opportunity to become a victim of random violent crime at the hands of a Caucasian. There's nothing quite like being held up at gunpoint by a silver-haired man named Ichabod wearing a cable knit sweater on a crisp autumn morning.

Truly, Portsmouth is a living time capsule of New England culture. It's as if it was frozen in time at the turn of the 20th century, which makes sense considering nothing notable has happened there since 1905.