NH side up close to the river tends to have better pavement conditions. Route 5 in VT is an old carriage road that they paved over and widening into a normal two lane highway. As a result the old carriage roads were narrow roads and they didn't do proper road building, they just laid down the blacktop over the additional road width so the road always cracks where the carriage road meets the widened road so you find long cracks in the road not far from the white line. Back in the past, 2011/12/13 have ridden everything, pretty much on both sides of the river from St. Johnsbury down to the MA border. I live 20 miles or so east of Claremont, NH. So I'm over that way quite often, not as much as I used to be but I know from experience VT hasn't changed their way of road construction along Rt 5. It's really noticeable between Windsor and Ascutney. You also notice it down around the Putney area as well. I know at the end of my 2015 trip I was going to ride down Rt 5 from St. Johnsbury to WRJ but when I woke up in the morning and started heading south I decided to take the better pavement and crossed over at Woodsville and took NH10 on down to Claremont instead.