I was on a very fast and frenetic four-state highpointing trip in the spring of 1996, starting and ending in Colorado Springs, with my objectives being the four close-by Plains highpoints, those of Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma. I generally followed a clock-wise loop, visiting the Nebraska highpoint first at Panorama Point. Bad weather chased me away from Kansas so I detoured north and hiked Harney Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota, this being yesterday, in equally crappy weather. From the Black Hills I made a somewhat meandering drive south through Badlands National Park, the Pine Ridge Reservation, and the Sand Hills of Nebraska, aiming for Burlington, Colorado. I enjoyed the Sand Hills a lot, and the weather was okay for this half-day. The Sand Hills are quite interesting and I made a mental note to return here some day (which I did, in 2004; see the Nebraska link above for that particular trip).

I arrived in Burlington in the late afternoon in progressively worsening weather and found a decent and cheap hotel to crash in for the night. I ate at a nearby restaurant. I recall the waitress pronounced "potato" and "bu-tay-duh". That night, I watched the final game of the 1996 Stanley Cup on the tube, a game that went something like four overtimes. I think I watched it for over 5 hours! The next morning, I got moving again. The Kansas state highpoint was not too far away from here.

Today's weather was just miserable, with heavy rain, thunder and lightning, and a foreboding darkness. The drive to the highpoint followed some interstate, and a series of state routes and local roads, until finally I came rumbling up a gravel road from the south, maybe 80 miles in all from Burlington. The highpoint is euphemistically called Mount Sunflower, named for the state flower, but don't let names fool you: there is no "mount" of any sort to be seen here. The highpoint is just some flat rangeland that happens to be higher than the rest of Kansas. The Great Plains tilt downward ever so slightly, west to east, so that the highpoint is not surprisingly along the western border with Colorado. However, much to my delight, the highpoint was decorated with a couple of railroad-spike sculptures and a plaque, so that there is actually something to see once you arrive. The land is privately owned, but the owners have set aside this small patch of land for our visiting and amusement pleasures. In all, it was fun. I didn't spend a whole lot of time here, as the weather wasn't improving much.

From here I started driving south toward the panhandle of Oklahoma. I entered back into Colorado and generally stuck to the southeastern corner of the state, through the range country of the High Plains, in awful, ugly weather. I passed through Lamar, then Springfield, then entered Oklahoma and worked my way to Boise City, aiming for Black Mesa, Oklahoma's highest point on its extreme west boundary with New Mexico. I was successful, but the weather was so rotten I didn't enjoy it at all. The sky was jet-black, and later that day, the weather service reported numerous big twisters slamming parts of north Texas and Oklahoma. You can read about that part of the trip here.