I've had a theory all my life, but I really have never wanted to test it. It's that I'm not at all allergic to poison ivy. Poking around these woods, I am 100% positive that I tromped through a stand of waist-high poison ivy before I knew what I was doing. I was single-mindedly seeking the tripoint, these three-leaved bushes be damned. As I was driving across Arkansas the next day (and Texas the next day), I realized I wasn't itching at all. So perhaps I am the ideal tripointer: blissfully ignorant of the potential hazards like rattlesnakes, property owners with shotguns, drug smugglers, and quicksand, and miraculously not allergic to poison ivy!
Through the soybean fields I drove, about three miles, to a levee about 100 m north of the Ohio River. I hopped out, into the humid August afternoon, and started walking. I followed the levee along the river, watching a barge chugging slowly upstream alongside me. I reached the woods and my GPS told me I had about 500 m still to wander to the mouth of the Wabash.
The going was rather rough - there was an old tractor track in places, and my guess was that this is a hunters' playground back in here. Vegetation was thick and I was thwarted a couple of times in finding a direct route by another bane of the tripointer's existence: poision ivy.
Not much out here on the muddy riverbank other than cracked mud, flying things (birds, bugs, butterflies), dense woods, and a barge puffing away from me (it's in Indiana in the photo, right).
