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 of some sort sticks up out of the flat and gives Prowers county a bona fide little peak for its highpoint. Two Buttes, as it's called, is visible from about 20 miles away. 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 (including dirt and ranch roads) so I went into the convenience mart to see if they one for Colorado- a DeLorme or a Landmark 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 the repartee went something like this:

Me: "Do you sell a Colorado Atlas... maybe DeLorme or 'The Roads of Colorado' ?"

Lady (on 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..."

Meanwhile we both saunter over to the map rack and find a DeLorme kind of hidden. As I made the purchase she still was trying to convey the concept to her phonemate. I felt bad for asking such a difficult question. But I had my atlas, which helped a lot!

Two Butes 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: 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! From here we all headed into Kansas for the Stanton and Morton highpoints.