Day 6 - 1/1/2005 - Dawning of the New Year and the long drive home...

The new day/year broke early for us as we packed up the car and headed for the first highpoint of the day, Britton Hill.  The drive was about an hour through flat land that gradually gained in altitude.  You can see info on this highpoint by clicking here.  While the highpoint of Florida is dead last in terms of difficulty and elevation, we were happy to check off one more point.  

The drive from Britton Hill to the highpoint of Alabama (Cheaha Mountain) was long and arduous.  It was almost completely on two-lane roads, with much of it on twisting backroads as we neared the summit.  Just a few miles from the mountain, we actually were back on a dirt road (shades of our trip out west!)  As the afternoon light was beginning to fade, we reached Cheaha.  I was very pleased to see it was open, since this was New Years Day.  For more info on Cheaha, click here.

After a short time on our last highpoint of the trip, we started home.  Unsure of how far we would make it that night, we just started driving north to catch I-20.  By 6:40pm we were on I-20 cruising toward east, and by 7:45 we had reached the outskirts of Atlanta.  A quick stop at Krystals for a "sack-o-burgers" and we were back on the road.  Through Georgia, and then through South Carolina.  We reached the NC border about 11:30 pm, and I was thinking of finding a motel for the night.  I power-chugged two cans of Redbull and decided to press on for one more hour to get past Charlotte.  About 1 am I saw a reststop and pulled over for a short nap.  I drove through the night in this fashion - drive an hour, sleep for a 30 minute nap.  At this pace, we reached the Virginia border on I-85 about 7 am.  We grabbed a quick bite at a Hardees and drove on toward Chesapeake.  After 2 1/2 hours, we pulled into the driveway and piled out.  

It was great to be home, and even better to doze off in a familiar place.

This trip was very different from the summer trip.  The highpoints on this trip felt more like obligations than adventures.  The terrain was far short of majestic, and there was little challenge anywhere on the trip (other than that required for driving long distances.)  By the end of the trip we had driven 3050 miles, driven through nine states, and occupied just over 6 days.  That is an average of over 500 miles per day (the last 24 hour period we visited two highpoints and drove over 1000 miles!)

2004 was a great year.  We visited 31 highpoints.  We climbed several volcanoes (one active).  We visited 46 states (all mainland except UT and OH).  We look forward to 2005!!!