Sunday, April 26, 2009

Delaware - Highpoint #2

Name: Ebright Azimuth
Height: 448'

Technically, this is my second Highpoint. The first I did sometime in August 1998 in Texas, before I realized I was a Highpointer. So in a way that makes this one my first highpoint as a Highpointer. Anyway, I'll eventually do an entry for Texas when I dig up my pictures from that trip.

Today I drove down to Ebright Azimuth, the highest point in Delaware at a whopping 448'. The second lowest highpoint in the US. Also only a 20 minute drive from my house.

Really, really easy to find. I had plugged in a guestimate of the the street address into my GPS, read a little about how to find it on the Internet, and off I went.

It turns out the sign for the highpoint was recently moved. The highpoint itself is somewhere in the field behind the sign, but the sign used to be on the other side of the street. Not more than 30' down the sidewalk from the sign is the USGS marker.

In the picture the marker is right about where the telephone pole is.

But the best part was meeting Doreen. She lives on the corner from the highpoint, and has lived there for 40 years. She's the local highpoint guru, and when she saw me taking pictures she came out to talk.

What a bonus! I had been excited to do this before, but she really got me energized, telling me a few stories of other highpointers, giving me literature about the club (www.highpointers.org), showing me people who signed her guestbook (which I also signed).

Here is an interesting factoid she shared about highpointing: the Highpointer's club founder has some of his ashes buried in each highpoint.

The other thing she shared with me was about the Super Secret Second USGS Marker! All I'd found on the rest of the Internet was the information about the one by the telephone pole. Just a short walk away you can easily find a second marker in a concrete post, by the main office of the trailer park on the other side of the field from the sign.

Apparently in the old days the USGS used to place three markers to triangulate the highpoint (the third marker I think is somewhere in the trailer park, I didn't go look for it). Now they use satellites.

Also, this marker is blue!


Finally, I took a picture of my stalwart traveling companion at the first USGS marker.




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