There was a hurricane coming as Dad and I drove to our final highpoint of this epic road trip.  We drove down the back country roads to beat it before the rain was expected to start at Driskill Mountain Louisiana.  We figured I should have time to hike it and continue driving as far as we could for a bit.  They were calling for  flooding and crazy winds so I knew I had to hurry.

We made it to the parking lot of Mt Zion Presbyterian Church which is where the trail starts.  The sun was shining and there were lots of puffy clouds in the sky, but I didn’t waste time, I hopped out of the car, grabbed my usual gear and headed down the trail.  The place had a slight Walking Dead feel and so I told Dad to not get eaten by zombies.  He had decided to wait in the car with the AC cranked up, which was parked next to a small cemetery.

The heat and humidity hit me right away – it was in the 90’s and the first bit of trail didn’t have much tree cover.  After traveling down the trail, which is a dirt road, for a bit I came to a split.  To the right there was a locked gate and to the left there was a small sign that read ‘designated trail.’  I followed the sign which lead me to a dirt path. This section of trail had some slight ups and downs, but there were no rocks and the trail felt soft to walk on which made it pleasant.  The trail split again after a bit – you could follow a blue blazed path to the summit or stay on the designated trail.  There was a sign stating that the blue blazed trail isn’t maintained so I stuck to the main trail.  There was plenty of shade, but I don’t think it made it any cooler.  I had to wonder about all the travel and hiking instagrammers I see with perfect makeup and hair – HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?!  This will never be me I realized as I continuously wiped sweat from my face and wheezed from asthma as I walked down the path.  GLAMOROUS!

I had the eerie feeling I was being watched about half way to the summit.  Along with hearing lots of crashing sounds in the woods.  I kept looking around, but couldn’t see anything.  The sound of sticks cracking kept getting closer and closer – ZOMBIES!!! 😮

Rick!! CORALLL!! HELP ME!! 

The zombies never did appear, but I saw some of the biggest cicadas I have ever seen in my life as well as some lizards and toads.  I believe they were a more likely reason for all the noises.  How can such tiny creatures make that much of a racket? 

 

I continued following the signs to the highpoint and after one last short steep uphill and I was there.

The highpoint was marked with a sign and the usual box to check in.  There was a big can of bug spray in the box which didn’t take me long to find out why it was left in there.  THE BUGS WERE AWFUL.  They bit and wouldn’t let go no matter how hard you swatted them.  If they did let go they would circle back right away and bite again.

 

I decided to check out the lookout which had a few benches, but didn’t stay long because the heat and the bugs were unbearable.

I booked it out of there with the impending hurricane on my mind and the bugs chasing me down the trail.  I made my way back to the car covered in sweat and bug bites (why again did I choose such a gross name for my blog?  Oh yeah – because to get to these cool places you have to deal with some nasty stuff sometimes.)

The sky was still sunny and we decided to drive until it started raining, but also keep an eye on the weather app.  Since we didn’t have service for quite some time we were relieved when we saw they pushed the estimated start time of the rain back so we had a few hours of sunny skies left.

We finally pulled over and decided we were ahead of schedule and if we needed to stay at the hotel another day to wait out the storm we would.  When we checked in they asked if we had a floor preference and Dad joked, “As high as possible so our room doesn’t flood!”  As we went out to dinner, heavy rain started.  We rushed back to the hotel to hunker down for the night.

In the morning we awoke to….sunny skies?  Where was the wind??  Where was the flooding and heavy rains?!?!  Were we in the eye of the storm??  Nope- it was downgraded it to a tropical storm and it had passed us already.  So I didn’t get to experience a hurricane (can’t say I’m disappointed about that) but I AM up to 32 state high points now!  WAHOO!  🙂

HAPPY TRAILS!