Have You No Backbone

The aptly named title for this post comes from the name of Maryland's highest location, which actually straddles Maryland and West Virginia. At 3000, 662 ft, it manages to pass the next highest stand-alone Peak in Maryland by about 70 feet. In all honesty, a lot of State high-points I've looked at or much like that, being very close to the next smallest integer but not quite there. By the way around, when I took an adventure to West Virginia, the next part of the trip to get home was to stop here. This little hill in the middle of an intense solar farm; who would have ever guessed?

This time, when we departed from our car, we realized that the tables had turned since West Virginia. Instead of driving up the mountain, we actually had to make and model on track to get to the top of the high point, it was a straight away shot, but about 90% switchbacks the whole time.

But yet, we made it.

After walking through the forest to get to this state High Point, we came to a rather noteworthy finding: no High Point bench, but instead, a sign and a guest book inside a mailbox. On top of the mailbox post was a small stone tower that somebody it started, so I added they headed to the silhouette there was building. I've been for the sign the guestbook to say that I made it to the highest point of Maryland, and also saying it was my third High Point at the time. Surprisingly enough though, there was a fair amount of individuals that let this be there 19th or 20th High Point.

With some fairly okay-ish views, compared to the others.

At this point in the game, I was still novice when I came to constructing plans for tackling problems and getting Solutions. But so, I did have to learn it quick. After planning this trip with my friend Travis, I then went and planned a couple of trips on my own, and used what I've learned to improve my planning abilities for the future. This concluded my overnight trip through West Virginia and Maryland, and I really learned a lot about humility in the way people live their lives. This is specially came when we drove 7 miles through private property because there was no maintenance Road that we could have otherwise taken to get from one state Highpoint to the other. We saw broken down Shacks that people had been presumably living in for a long time. And, for the first time being outside of Maryland and Pennsylvania, we saw wine being sold in a gas station, just before our home States finally changed their liquor laws. And, we also learned that we needed to hike on treadmills a whole lot more before we were to tackle bigger high points such as Ranier, Katahdin, Marcy, and eventually, Denali.

Sunflowers and Sad Times

During the weekend, when my friend had off work, we decided to hate our lives a little bit and drive all the way to Kansas. To this day, I am still uncertain as to why we didn't just go to Wyoming.

We drove through 3 hours of nothingness, with the last 40 minutes being slippery dirt roads, and it rained on top of that. All I can say is yay, I got another state hi-point one of my belt. This takes the cake for the most unimpressive state that I've ever been to, though. (Sorry for any Kansas kids reading this.)

The view from the top of Mount Sunflower.

To make matters worse, we actually got stuck in a ditch right as we got to the state high point. It took an hour for the rescue toget to us, an hour for the ride back to the car, 30 minutes to pull it out of the ditch, and an hour back to state line. Needless to say, we had enough excitement for one weekend.

We also hit rain on the way home in a huge stormhead. and then, it all of a sudden stopped. and so I learned two things. One, if you're in the midwest you see a rain cloud, don't chance it, just run. two, the weather will screw you over and then pass by like nothing happened.

Back in town, we had a light dinner and called it quits for one day. Ultimately, I'm thankful that we made it out of Tornado Alley alive. Stay tuned for more adventures!