Prowers county is on Colorado's east boundary with Kansas and is a typical Plains county: flat ranch land, few trees, lots of grassland. But curiously, a volcanic remnant sticks up out of the flat and gives Prowers county a bona fide little peak for its highpoint. Two Buttes, as it's called, sticks up enough from the surrounding flatness so that it is visible from about 20 miles away. I've actually been here twice! On my first visit I came up from the south out of Oklahoma and stopped for gas in Springfield. I needed a better map that showed all the roads of Colorado (including dirt and ranch roads) so I went into the convenience mart to see if they had a good Colorado atlas, a DeLorme or a Benchmark atlas was what I was looking for. The lady was on the phone, apparently with someone else who also works at the mart, judging by their conversation. So our conversation went something like this:

Me to lady: "Do you sell a Colorado Atlas?"

Lady (to the phone): "Do we sell... (to me) what's it called? (I remind her) (back to the phone) Roads of Colorado... Roads of... Roads of Colorado... Colorado... It's a road atlas of Colorado. A road atlas of Colorado. Do we sell it... Colorado..."

It's as if they'd never heard of these big books called road map atlases. In the meantime I walked to their little book and map display and lo, there was a Colorado DeLorme! They actually had one, so I bought it. If they had one, why were they so clueless? I'm glad I didn't ask for something really confusing like a bag of chips.

After I paid for my atlas and left, I could still picture them on the phone: "He bought it... the road map... of Colorado... the road map book... he bought it... of Colorado... The road map... we had one... Ah forget it, I'll draw you a diagram when you come in next...".

Me, I was off like the wind on to Two Buttes. Two Buttes is pretty easy to find since it's so obvous, but it still requires a bit of gravel road approach to get to the base. It was about 6 p.m. so I parked and made a quick hike to the top. The gain is over 300 feet, so it's a pretty nice little hike. Of the two humps, the southern one is the higher of the two. I climbed both anyway. The views are surprisingly nice: little mesas and other similar rocky knobs dot the landscape here and there. A photo later I was down and back to my truck. I spent the remainder of daylight driving toward the Baca County highpoint, doubling back through Springfield (where I'm sure the lady was still on the phone with my request) and making the 30+ miles drive toward Carrizo Mountain. But it was almost dark when I arrived so I camped at a picnic area instead amid rolling hills and juniper landscapes. Very pretty. There are petroglyphs in the area if one know where to look.

Second visit, 9/20/02: I came back during a day trip with a gang of interested people as part of the 2002 Oklahoma Highpointers convention. Good chance to get some better photos, if you can call the ones at left "better". We all parked at the base and made our own way up to the top, going at a leisurely pace. There was probably two dozen of us. After some resting and talking and looking around, we headed down to continue on our journeys. From here we all headed into Kansas for the Stanton and Morton highpoints.