Charles Mound - The Great 48

Charles Mound (Illinois) HP #19

Charles Mound is on private property and is only open to the public on the first weekend of June, July and August.  When planning the logistics of a 3 week road trip that involves climbing 48 mountains that is a very small window to hit considering we started on Mount Rainier twelve days earlier.  In the movie "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" there is a scene where Mr. Fox begins to dig in a very specific direction and ends up perfectly hitting his mark after digging for miles and ends up right smack dab in the middle of the chicken coop.  Well, that's sort of how I felt after driving up to the Charles Mound farm at 8am local time on Sunday morning.  We had spent 12 days climbing some of the toughest mountains in the US and driving nearly ten thousand miles and managed to hit the Illinois highpoint at the exact time it was "legal" to be there.  The walk is a charming one mile walk down a tree covered gravel lane.  We were thrilled to not be the car for half an hour and even more thrilled to avoid any chance of a trespassing ticket ;-)