The Sugarloaf Mountain Expedition

I'm taking a meteorology class.
I know what you're thinking, and NO. We don't get to study these:

cool meteors

No, in meteorology we study these:

lame weather patterns

So today for class I got to wake up and drive out to a special place called Sugarloaf Mountain in Germantown Maryland for our semester field trip.
Again, I know what you're thinking.
When I say "Sugarloaf" you think THIS:



Lord knows I did.
In reality Sugarloaf mountain is THIS:

Photo I didn't take

Yeah, lame, I know. It isn't made out of ONE candy cane. And that house way off in the distance? Yeah, it's NOT made of gingerbread. It's a barn owned by an old lonely man.

I arrived in my silver minivan at the bottom of the mountain where I was greeted by a group of other students in their own cars. None of us knew where, exactly, on a mountain, we were supposed to meet. So in our confusion we asked the elderly teacher's aide (who was having a quaint picnic on the grass) if he could point us in the right direction.
Apparently he misunderstood, because he pointed us precisely in the wrong direction. In fact, in the opposite direction we were meant to be going.
Consequentially, we found ourselves driving through a couple farms, up a dirt path, in circles, around the mountain, until we all arrived at a water pumping station in the middle of a grassy knoll.
We backtracked, and eventually the old man called the professor and pointed us in the right direction.
The rest of the trip was pretty standard. Walking around, taking wind, pressure, and humidity measurements, and walking around some more. They had some fancy-pants contraptions for us to use, but it didn't take much to tell us it was hot and humid.
To be honest, I wish I had just joined the old guy with his picnic.
Live and learn.