High Point weekend

Eric and I headed out to Minnesota last weekend to bag a couple of state high points.  The HP in IL (Charles Mound) is privately owned and only accessible on weekends in the summer.  Most of the dates conflicted with races so we settled for the final weekend for the 2011 season.  I worked out a plan that would have us also “climbing” Hawkeye Point, the HP in IA.

I headed up to Montpelier on Friday and joined Eric and Murdoch (his dog) for a 5 mile run.  We had the first of a few early mornings with a 5am flight out of Burlington.  We were in MN early and drove south to Albert Lea where we got in a nice run in the Myre-Big Island state park.  It was pouring when we finished and the long drive to the western edge of the state looked to be nasty, but in a few miles (after seeing some lightning strikes very much up close) we were in the clear and had a nice drive to Hawkeye Point.  Conditions were great and we did another 6 mile run that ended with us standing on the highest point in IA.  We took some pictures, including shots of Cheese Curl (the high point cat) and then hauled ass for another long drive back to Albert Lea.  Our total for the day was 384 miles in the car.

On Sunday we were up at 430am and off to get a bunch of miles, driving and running.  At 7am we stopped in Evansville IA for a 6 mile run on a nice bike path.  Our next stop was the “Field of Dreams” site near Myersville.  We quickly checked it out and ran the bases before moving on to Illinois.  We rolled up to the gates at Charles Mound at 10:30am just as another group was leaving.  It was an easy decision for us to do a 3 mile (round-trip) run from the gate to the summit.  Neither of us were interested in walking it…this was bonus mileage!  We were on top in just over 11 minutes, took a few pictures and checked out the register then ran down in just over 10 minutes.  Thirty people had already visited the HP on the final weekend and as we pulled out another group was parking.  Who would’ve thought that many people were interested in HPs?

We had a really long drive back to Minneapolis so we broke it up with another 6 mile run.  We stopped in the town of Guttenburg IA and ran along the Mississippi river on a levee that had some nice views of the area.  We reached our hotel in the late afternoon having covered 538 miles that day.

Field of Dreams

Trip totals

2 state high points (my 39^th and 40^th & Eric’s 20^th and 21^st)

922 miles driven (not counting my drive to/from Burlington)

27 miles run