“Do you realize we have driven for 3 days and over 1500 miles and still didn’t get to any of the state highpoints yet?” my dad pointed out.
It was true – my Dad and I planned a road trip and we were supposed to go to Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois to visit those highpoints, but they were calling for some crazy storms in that area so we decided to just keep driving and hit Nebraska, North Dakota, Iowa and Illinois instead.
Just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who has been reading my blog – it has been really awesome to chat with so many people who are into the same interests as I am. 🙂
Since it was too hot to go backpacking and I cancelled the trip I was supposed to go on to do the MD section of the AT I was trying to find something else to do – I was 1/2 joking when I said to my dad “wanna go on a road trip to get the OH and IN state highpoints,” but he said sure! WAHOO! Last minute road trip!!! 🙂
So early Sat am we jumped in the car and headed out west. When we plugged the coordinates into my GPS it said we would arrive a little after 2:30- this made us very nervous because on summitpost.com it says the OH HIGHPOINT is only open until 3. We knew we didn’t have much time to spare. My dad wanted to take the turnpike most of the way but my GPS kept trying to redirect us off the turnpike. “I’M NOT GOING THAT WAY!!!! What is it @!*•! doing!?!???” I said “idk dad but it’s just gonna try to keep redirecting you- do you want me to put it on mute if you know where ur going?” He shouted “I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING TIL I GET THERE!!” Which I thought was hysterical- after a few more times of listing to my GPS say “recalculating” and a few more curse words from my dad, I checked the settings- somehow it was checked to avoid toll roads- ah HA! Problem solved- and it also reduced our driving time and said we should get to Campbell Hill at 1:45- much better!!!
I have to say I just came back from an absolute wonderful weekend road trip with my Dad!
As we were heading to the NJ state high point, somewhere in PA, we happened to see a guy standing on the side of the road wearing a backpack and holding a cardboard sign– all I saw on the sign was a stacked A T written in black sharpie— the famed symbol for the APPALACHIAN TRAIL! I yelled for my dad to stop!! “He’s an Appalachian trail hiker! Should we give him a lift??” My dad quickly replied “SURE!” So I hopped out and flagged him over.
Kevin and I had a 3 day weekend so we decided to try to knock out a few state highpoints. I wanted to do the same trip the Summit Chicks did and snag 5 highpoints in 3 days – CT,MA, VT, NH, and RI. Piece of cake right? Honestly it was a bit harder than I thought to try to plan everything and where we could stay. MapQuest is AWESOME and I love that you can put in your route and click a button so it shows you lodging and campsites along your drive. I planned to do the exact same route the summit chicks did, but Kevin said that he didn’t want to drive his giant truck up Mt Washington on a Saturday when there would be tons of traffic and people to deal with. I agreed- there is actually some rules about how big and wide your vehicle can be for Mt Washington – Kevin’s was ok- barely, so if you are planning this trip and have a larger vehicle you may want to look into this! So we ultimately decided to do the loop of highpoints the Summit Chicks did, but in reverse.
When our vacation to South Dakota was approaching we would have one of the following conversations with people:
“What are you doing for vacation?”
“We’re going to see Mount Rushmore.”
“Where’s that?”
“South Dakota.”
OR
“Where are you going for vacation?”
“South Dakota”
“What is out there?” in a totally confused tone of voice
“Mount Rushmore”
“OH! I never knew that’s where that was!”
I have to say, I have never really been to Pittsburg or the surrounding area before, but my parents were talking about how they always wanted to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house Falling Water. I read online that Falling Water is pretty close to the PA state highpoint Mt Davis- so let’s make this trip happen! 🙂
Ebright Azimuth the highest point in Delaware is probably the easiest to achieve- if you can even call it an achievement! It is literally along a road next to a sidewalk next to a trailer park. I wonder how many people drive that road every day and don’t even realize what the sign says!
I’m not exactly sure what got me interested in hiking all the state highpoints. I like hiking and seeing new places- so why not right? So after much planning, my dad and I set off to conquer 3 state highpoints – that was the plan anyway. I follow the Summit Chicks blog and got a lot of information about the highpoints from them as well as various other sites. I saw that you could potentially get 3 highpoints in 1 day – WV, MD and PA. Always up for a challenge, I started making plans for a road trip with my dad and JoJo. We saw that Skyline Drive was fairly close to Spruce Knob, the West Virginia highpoint and I have always wanted to see Shenandoah National Park so we decided to take the scenic route to our 1st highpoint.
blisters and bug bites 