In early January 2020, just before Atlas’s 2nd birthday, we took a spur of the moment road trip to mark two more highpoints off of our list. We have a giant colorful map on the wall in our living room where we have marked highpoints in every state and we use this to figure out points that are close together & plan our trips accordingly. Winter time after the chaos of the holidays subsides and work slows down makes us all go a little stir crazy, so this was a perfect time for a family adventure! Hoosier Hill – Indiana’s highest point and Campbell Hill – Ohio’s highest point are a little over an hour and a half apart and about seven hours from Chattanooga straight up I-75. We stayed in Richmond, Indiana for a couple of nights where we played games and watched football and Atlas got to see some snow for pretty much the first time in his life. It was SO cold (not like Tennessee cold) and we weren’t super prepared for it so we didn’t get a ton of outside time, but still got to make some sweet family memories.
We drove to both highpoints on our second day starting with the 20 minute drive to Hoosier Hill. The way to the highpoint is well marked with road signs and while I believe it actually sits on private property we didn’t have any trouble accessing it. It literally is a hill that sits back in the woods really close to the Ohio border. There really isn’t anything too exciting about this part of Indiana – other than just the fact that it’s another highpoint in the books! You can park and walk right up to it so there is no hiking involved in this one.
From Hoosier Hill we drove a little under two hours to Campbell Hill in the town of Bellefontaine, Ohio. Again, not the most exciting drive or highpoint, but that’s not really the point. Highpointing takes you to the most unexpected places and that’s a huge part of the adventure. Campbell Hill sits on the campus of the Ohio Hi-Point Vocational School and is well marked and easily accessed. I think we saw a Hi-Point Church too so there’s no doubt the town is proud of owning the highest point in the state! Like Hoosier Hill, Campbell Hill is flat with no hiking involved. It was so cold that I think we we got out of the car for about 7 minutes to see the marker and take a photo and jumped right back in.
We headed south the next day and since the drive home took us through part of bourbon country in Kentucky, we stopped at the Buffalo Trace distillery. We’ve pretty much done the entire Bourbon Trail and Atlas has visited several distilleries that I’m sure he will appreciate one day so this was a fun stop. You never know if the crowd you’re touring with will be the “um why do you have a two year old at a bourbon distillery” crowd, but luckily we had a great guide and these folks enjoyed him very much. After our tour we spent the night somewhere in Kentucky and headed home the next day with some rare bourbon and feeling accomplished that we marked off two more highpoints.
