34th High Point Visited
20th Highest State Highpoint
43th Most Difficult
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My last five highpoints were all tough hikes/climbs however this high point adventure will be of a different sort. Three states high points are part of this trip beginning with Nebraska, then on to Kansas and finally Oklahoma. Maybe it's hard to think about a high point in any of these 3 states especially since the first two are simply "drive up" destinations basically to flat land that doesn't even remotely resemble a mountain. The plains states slowly gain elevation the further you go west so all three of these state's highpoints are near the western edge of each state. Strangely enough Nebraska's high point rises to the height of 5,425 ft which is higher than many of the high points in most of the country's eastern state's highpoints which were well earned hikes. Simply driving to a location in a field at 5,425 feet is a little anticlimactic however that doesn't make it any less of an adventure.
I've usually had luck recruiting friends for all my previous high points however when I put out a couple of feelers to my usual suspects I didn't get much interest from them. Last year I took Parisa to Ohio for a weekend to a Buckeye game but we haven't traveled together since she graduated from high school and I thought this trip was making for something she might enjoy. The driving between states she didn't seem to be a big fan of, however, adding a few days to the end of the trip in Colorado I hoped was just the motivation it would take to recruit her and it worked. Dates were chosen and a flight was booked.
Since all 3 state's high points were in the middle of nowhere, the only logical place to fly into seemed to be Denver. Believe it or not Nebraska's Panorama Point was barely over 2 hours from the Denver airport so we could bag at least one state the day we land. From Nebraska, it was another 4.5 hours to Kansas's highpoint. One of my good friends is the master at creating travel Spreadsheets which detailed travel logistics and as much as I would have like to replicate a timeline for this trip it was hard create one not knowing how far we would be able to travel each day. The goal of course was to visit all three highpoints with a second goal of trying to make it back to the Colorado mountains as early as possible.
While it may have seemed logical to have hotel reservations I wasn't sure how far we could travel everyday so there was some risk/reward of the uncertainty of having a place to stay vs. maximizing travel each day to make it as far as possible. Additionally, once we finally made it back to Colorado our plan was to evolve day by day where we would go and what we would visit. Parisa had some doubts before we left California about this plan but I kept my fingers crossed and hoped the cards would fall into place.
While she wasn't excited about not having a place to stay each night I feel like I made it up by renting a really cool car for the week. I found a new company that offered predominantly Jeep Rubicon's which definitely added to the coolness factor of being able to easily cross any terrain that come our way. The rental car facility was off site of the airport which perhaps helped them lower their costs which they passed along to the consumer. We landed and followed their directions to the offsite shuttle pickup and we were pleasantly surprised we only waited a couple of minutes. Things were already going as planned, well that is until we arrived at their lot. The line was out the door of other customers waiting to check out their vehicle. Doing the math from previous experience I calculated about 10 minutes per person which equated to nearly a 2 hour wait. After a very frustrating experience checking in and after 2.5 hours we finally had our vehicle.
First stop was to find a place for lunch. It's always fun to try new places so at one of the closest exits we search to see what was nearby and found a great brick oven pizza place. I knew the road was going to be pretty sparce with places to stop so we each ordered our own pizza and just for safety measures kept the leftovers in the car in case we couldn't find any place to stop next time we were hungry.
Already 2.5 hours behind schedule there is no way we could make it all the way to Kansas (our 2nd stop) before sunset so that took off a little of the pressure of driving the first day, however, it also meant we would have time for another point of interest called Pawnee Butte which I had wanted to visit after our first highpoint. There was hardly a hill all the way from the airport to Panorama Point. Parisa had T-mobile and I had Verizon and it seemed that both of our phones were in and out of coverage but somehow managed to get to where we were going after several detours because of closed roads.
We saw the many wind turbines in the area and even stopped by a smaller windmill in a field next to the road. Who knew the windmill could pump water from a well which filled up a tub for the livestock to drink. It made for a great Kodak moment and our only stop before we made our way to the high point. We did pass multiple directions signs to Pawnee Butte however it's known for being a little hard to find which is puzzling because it seems as if a butte sticking itself out from the plains shouldn't be that hard to find. Both Apple Maps and Google Maps took us to a point that wasn't the actual highpoint, but a turn off from the main road which led to private land where the actual highpoint would be found.
We stopped briefly at the sign and proceeded down the unmaintained drive to the apparent high point landmark. As we got closer we were both surprised to see another car parked at the high point. I'm not sure if they were more surprised to see us or if we were more surprised to see them! It was a couple making their first drive across country to the west starting from Michigan. I asked them if they were highpointers but somehow they just found the spot as a "things to do" on their destination.
At last after getting up at 5 a.m. California time at 5:40pm we finally arrived at our first highpoint! There was a register and we were the 4th group of the day. For such a random destination in the middle of nowhere I found that very interesting that we weren't the only crazy people out there! Off in the distance we saw a heard of livestock all gathered around a windmill which must have also been pumping water out of a well. The animals were far away and seemed either mostly or even all were buffalos.
There was no doute we located the highpoint where we found a bench with an engraved plaque, a marble marker, and a desk of sorts that had a drawer that pulled out with a register and various random items and plastered with stickers inside. We took a few pictures and since we shared the experience with the other couple there at the same time they took our picture.
Interesting enough it seemed we were near a unique location which is called Tri-State which Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska all come together. It appeared on our phones that we were really close, but it was inaccessible due to private lands and a fence we could drive thru from where we were. Parisa thought it would be fun to see if we could get there so we tried to use our phone to navigate and with spotty service somehow we managed to find another sign marking a trail to the actual Tri-State Point. Again a gate and a fence so we couldn't drive cross country and the signage didn't indicate how far the point actually was from the apparent trailhead we decided to give up on our quest to find the actual spot somewhere out in the field. We didn't have internet service so didn't realize until we returned home that it was only .73 miles away or less than 1.5 miles round trip.
We still had spotty mobile coverage but managed to get a brief signal to plug in our next destination in Kansas and began the long drive. We crossed back into Colorado on a back road that had a cool "Welcome to Colorado" sign and looking over our shoulders found a "Welcome to Nebraska" sign which we jumped out of the car to get a few selfies with the signs in the background. Already in just a few hours we had left California and been to Colorado, Nebraska, and real briefly Wyoming!
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