Virginia #18 return of the hike

We would have liked to include Virginia's highpoint during our October 2007 marathon highpointing trip, but the long hike didn't fit our schedule. So we made a weekend out of it and brought Pig.

Becki and I haven't had this long of a hike since we did Colorado's highpoint in 2006. Our guide book says it is 8 miles round trip, but we took a wrong direction at some point so we probably made it 9 miles.

We hit the trail early in the morning. About 1 mile in, Becki emphatically whispered, "PSST" and awkwardly pointed to a group of wild ponies up the hill. We saw many more groups in the distance, but the prize was a mother and two foals in the middle of the trail!


They even came up to me but when I pulled my hands out of my pocket they jumped back. Becki kept her hands out and petted these two babies.


I wore "trail shoes," the North Face ones on the right. Not a good idea. Now I know why there are hiking shoes. These lightweight shoes flexed with every rock I stepped on and really made my feet sore. I'll remember in the future lightweight shoes are only good for flat even terrain.


As you can see the weather and hike was beautiful.
I think this is the first time we tried out the trekking poles we got as a wedding present. They really made hiking a breeze. Thanks Sarah, Trey, and Kathy!

Trees blocked the view from the summit.
Pig (our dog) came on the trip but because she's 15 years old and hates rain, we decided to let her hold down the fort. We left her at our campsite underneath a giant 12'x12' rain tarp. We came back to find a soaking wet yellow dog whose leash was tangled up in the picnic table . She didn't quite figure out the shelter we left for her. Not too smart, but she sure is cute!

Arkansas #17 and the death of the VW Golf TDI

After we passed through Little Rock, Arkansas, we hit some thick traffic on the highway. Maybe our car had a secret button that turned our car invisible. Maybe I accidentally hit it. Maybe the lady in the white car was talking on her phone and didn't look over her shoulder during her lane change. Whatever the case was, she ran us off the road. Becki was driving, and she tried to compensate. Unfortunately, our car spun out of control and skidded through 3 lanes of traffic. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt...except the TDI. We totaled the car and the cause of the accident left the scene, so we were stranded in not-so-scenic Conway, Arkansas. The police officer was great, and she helped us with everything. We needed to stay the night and wait for our new rental ride with enough room for P-Dog. We weren't allowed to smoke in the rental, but Pig sneaked in a rawhide "stoogie."


The trailhead to the highpoint. It was a sunny, crisp day. Perfect for highpointing!


After hitting the summit, we were on to Springfield, Missouri (my hometown). Since we had out tearful good by with the TDI and it was going to be $400 to rent a car to get back to Columbus, we bought a used Civic to drive home. Just to clarify, I drove the entire way because Becki can't drive a stick. (Becki's note: I can drive a stick, I just choose not to.)

Louisiana #16

Florida #15

This makes our second highpoint on this day.

Lakewood Park, the lowest state highpoint at 345 feet. Neither Becki nor Pig were ready for the camera.



This was one of those anti-climatic highpoints. It was not clear we were on a highpoint of anything. It was so flat, I think we saw the ocean (not really).

Afterwords, we drove west along the cost towards our next highpoint destination. We stopped at a huge restaurant on the beach in Destin before searching for a campsite. It was another long night of looking for a campsite along our route to Louisiana.

Alabama #14, Cheaha Mountain

We topped off our biological tanks with some Cracker Barrel near Birmingham before traveling east to the Alabama highpoint. Alabama is a drive up and includes camping. We should have researched the camping situation beforehand because we could have spent the night at the highpoint. However, too much planning takes some of the excitement out of the trip!

As shown in the picture above, the Cheaha Mountain has a nice lookout tower.


We were too cheap to pay for the binoculars, so we just took our picture with it instead. Note, we used the correct flag this time. Good job, us!


The view to the north from the tower.


Pig couldn't make it up the steep stairs of the tower, so she settled for a photo at the sign.

After all this highpointing we were hungry. Fortunately, while driving through some small town in southern Alabama on our way to Florida we saw Unique Bar-B-Que, this little joint in the middle of nowhere. Of course we ordered the pulled pork and sweet tea (pronounced swate-tay). Now, every barbecue is compared to Unique Bar-B-Que.

Mississippi kicks off Spring Break 2008 highpointing marathon

We kick off a long week of state highpointing in the South with Mississippi. Our journey starts on Sunday March 16th from from Becki's parent's house in Cincinnati with our Golf TDI packed up with Pig (our dog, not an actual pig). We unsuccessfully attempted to unload Pig at Becki's parents' house "Hotel Charlie" for the week while we traveled across the South.

The drive was long to the first highpoint and our VW TDI Golf rolled over to 100,000 miles just as we crossed into Mississippi from Tennessee.

We accidentally flew the wrong flag for this pose, so I GIMPed in the correct one. Pig is modeling her pink Copper Mountain Colorado bandanna.

Pig is all about the "hero" pose.

We barely made it into the northeast corner of Mississippi before we crossed into Alabama in search of a place to camp for the night. Without a nightly camping plan, we used the tent symbol on our road atlas to search out camping sites. We wasted an hour or two driving to a state park to find that it was closed. Hint: state parks typically close at sunset. Thanks to our computer street atlas, we found phone numbers and navigated our way to a private site and settled down for the night as the only occupant.