First visit, May 2001: Today was the third day of my quick swing through the Pennsylvania-area states; in the previous two days I had nabbed about 10 Pennsylvania county highpoints, plus the New Jersey state highpoint. I worked my way down toward the Philadelphia area and even managed to get a local county highpoint at 9:30 the previous evening. Then, it was just the minor challenge of finding a place to stay for the evening. I wanted to be close to the Delaware state highpoint the next morning.

I spent the night at a Motel-6 in Essington, which is on Interstate-95 about 10 miles south of Philadelphia and about the same north of Wilmington. I awoke early and hit the road by 6 a.m. From I-95 I exited onto Naamans Road just inside Delaware; the only hint that I'd crossed from Pennsylvania into Delaware was the slight difference in road signs for there was no state line sign. From the exit I proceeded west to Ebright Road, about 4 miles from the interstate. Soon, I was on Ebright Road, where I parked on Turf Road and paced the area, walking over to the sign on Ebright Road denoting the state highpoint. The area is pretty flat and has seen much man-made contouring over the years. A big field west of the road and east of a trailer park could also contain the highpoint, as could the trailer park itself. Wherever it is, it's a trivial highpoint, probably the easiest of all 50 states. As soon as I was done, I re-entered Pennsylvania and headed west along US-30 into Amish country and for more Pennsylvania county apexes.

Second visit, August 2005: Beth and I were visiting her family in Virginia, with plans to leave early and spend 3 days touring the Delmarva Peninsula, so named since it consists of all or parts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. For me, I'd never been in this area before and had only just barely nicked Delaware on my first visit. Plus, we had plans to visit Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, which would be my first visit ever to the Atlantic Ocean! Beth, of course, had been in the area before but never really spent much time in it; for both of us this would be a chance to get to know an area we might not otherwise have ever bothered visiting.

We actually left her folks' home in Virginia at about 1 a.m., with plans to just drive a few miles into Charles Town, West Virginia, for a hotel. But they were sold out, and so was Frederick in Maryland, so we ended up driving over 100 miles and got ourselves past the Baltimore metroplex before total fatigue set in around 4 a.m. We found ourselves in a town called Joppatowne and at a Super-8 motel. I asked the guy if he'd sell us a room for half price but he wouldn't budge. So we ended up parking in a discreet corner of the Super-8 parking lot and getting some shuteye in the car. We had a SUV rental so we had room. We slept just a couple hours, arising with the sun. We even helped ourselves to some of the continental breakfast offerings at the Super-8. Two donuts, me. Coffee, Beth. Aside from having an ugly name, Joppatowne isn't much to behold. The search for a clean restroom in town was also a challenge, but I eventually found one.

First on the docket was a visit to Ebright Azimuth, the Delaware state highpoint. I battled mid-morning Wilmington traffic and got us to the highpoint with no trouble. I parked along the road into the trailer park, and we got out and walked over to the sign. Then we started to walk across the field and be on our way when we heard a woman calling for us, 'yoo-hoo', that sort of thing. She had a big book in her hands and as it turned out, she was the self-appointed historian and keeper-of-records of the Delaware highpoint! Her name is Doreen Kupczyk (That's a guess on the spelling of her last name). She is an older woman, presumably retired, with a thick east-coast accent. She asked us if we were highpointers and had us sign her register, which we did so gladly. She kindly took photos of us at the highpoint sign and then gave us an impromptu lecture on the history of the highpoint. Apparently she bought the house near the sign a few years ago and was surprised to see so many people come from far away to visit the highpoint. So she took it upon herself to learn about the area and be its cultural caretaker! Good for her, I say. She was very knowledgeable and sweet, and showed us some things we would have missed otherwise. We ended up talking with her for about 20 minutes. She showed us the highest USGS brass marker in Delaware that is in the dirt near a sidewalk across the street from the sign. It had been covered by the sidewalk crews years ago and she led an effort to have a small piece of the sidewalk cut away to expose the marker. Be sure to find this marker: it's inside an obvious cut-away of the sidewalk. On our visit it was completely covered in dirt and we would have missed it completely. I scraped off the dirt and there it was. It's actually a witness marker (with an arrow on it), not a true benchmark. But it pointed to the traditional benchmark, which is apparently long gone. She also told us to check out some buildings northwest of the field, which we did. We ended up walking all around the field and a bit in the trailer park, and even entered into Pennsylvania for a tiny bit. Well, that was a nice visit! What we planned for a 10-minute tag-and-run visit turned into a solid 40 minutes of northern Delaware history! Make sure you get Doreen's attention; she is a very kind and sweet woman and you will definitely enjoy your high Delaware experience much the better!

We rewarded ourselves with a visit at a Barnes & Noble nearby, the went south about an hour to Rehoboth Beach, where I got to play in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time ever. We spent the night at a ... Super-8 (believe it or not), in Milford, about 20 miles inland.