my suggestion

If you're fairly new to highpointing, there's a tendency to want to add to your total fast, but what are you racing towards? You're not going to be the first to do this.

I'd recommend cutting this trip in half. Pick four or five and don't try to do nine in eight days.

Here are some suggestions to make more out of a few hps:

There's not much to add to PA-MD, although with a few variants, you can do a short hike to the PA highpoint instead of just driving there.

When you head south, you've got some real mountains to climb. Why not climb them instead of just driving to them?

WV we did as an overnight hike -- 20 miles roundtrip. You could do it as a long dayhike. The lack of a reasonable day hike here is surprising, but we couldn't make that work for us. We got the maps at the seneca rocks vistors center. I'd guess you can get them online now (I didn't even know there was an internet back when I went there). It's a buggy hike, or at least it was in May 1993, when I did it. This was my first highpoint as a purposeful highpointer.

In Georgia, we hiked up the trail from the road in the valley (it was 12 years ago and I don't remember the details). It was something like a 3500 foot elevation gain -- just a great dayhike.

We did VA as an overnight backpacking trip and really enjoyed it.

For NC, we spent one night camping at the trailhead (blackwoods campground) and another in the woods on the mountain. Its only 12 miles round trip, so you could do it as a dayhike, but we wanted to camp on the mountain.

In TN we did a three day thirty six mile loop that went over the highpoint. I also went back years later with my three year old daughter and walked up the short paved trail. If you've never been to the Smokies before, do more than just drive through.

In each case it's beautiful country, and in GA-NC-TN, the developed area around the actual highpoint is the least interesting part of it.

In my personal opinion, KY and SC are ugly highpoints that are fine to do as drive-bys.