Just back from a beautiful Memorial Day weekend spent with two of my little ones in St. Johnsbury, capital of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. My uncle Rod, a retired art teacher and landscape painter, lives in a house on a wooded hill above town.

It's gorgeous up there, but hardly a poster child for economic development. There are unobstructed views galore, mainly because the region is so remote and poor - about 40 miles from the Canadian border - it has yet to attract any significant development. And may never, at this point.

Of course, if you look closely at the landscape of lush, rolling green hills and mountains and dairy farms, there's the ubiquitous mobile home, as standard as capes and colonials are in Greater Boston.

Needless to say, if you are looking to buy a relatively inexpensive home of some sort, there's a lot to pick from.

There are lots of rundown older homes for below $100,000 - the few half decent ones might put you out $150,000 or so, based on a quick reading of the real estate ads. Heck, you can pick up a pretty nice mobile home for $25,000.

The few upscale homes of the type you might find in the suburbs around Boston can cost you up to $300,000 or more - though some of these look like shipwrecks from the bubble years when wealthy New Yorkers overpaid and went crazy on renovations no one wants now. (My uncle's last house, an 1801 colonial in tiny Danville outside of St. Johnsbury, is on the market again for a shade under $300,000. The new owners aren't playing up the historic charm of the house. Instead, the ad features a single photo of stainless steel kitchen of the type common around here. Anyway, somebody just blew a lot of money - the home isn't selling.)

Beauty and warts and all, I wouldn't mind living up there - my mother's side of the family has deep roots in that part of Vermont.

So what's my point?