THREE SUMMITS: GETTING THERE AND SUMMIT #1, PANORAMA POINT IN NEBRASKA

 October 16, 2020

Now that we have been to all 50 states, my husband is trying to "fill in the spaces" on the United States map--traveling to places within the states where we have not been. Since we have been to many of the major cities, that means that he is looking for, shall we say, "out-of-the-way" places to visit. He also is keeping a list of state high points that he has climbed (or driven to). That's how he got the idea to travel to a rather obscure area of the U.S.--the western regions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. He could check three high points off his list and visit a little-known area of the U.S. Perfect.

Looks excitin', doesn't it?

And just to convince you of how exciting this trip was going to be, here is the location of those three high points. Note how close they are to major cities--heck, to any city. They are in Nowheresville.

This is what I was leaving behind. (The mural is in the Ontario Airport.)

We flew from Ontario, California, to Denver, Colorado. The best part of the flight was that we flew directly over the Grand Canyon. If we've done that before, I have not had a window seat on the correct side of the plane. This time, I had a spectacular view.

Flying over the Rockies a little while later provided quite a contrast!

The Denver Airport architecture imitates those mountains.

We picked up a car and wasted no time heading out to our first high point of the trip: Nebraska's Panorama Point.  We drove through a heavily populated area . . . populated by antelope, at least.

Is this area of Nebraska predominantly Republican or Democrat? We weren't sure.

With all the windmill farms, we felt like we were on the road to Palm Springs, which also has lots of windmills.  Except there were no mountains on this drive. And we were on dirt roads instead of a six-lane freeway. And there were no other cars. And there were no people. Okay, so it didn't feel like the road to Palm Springs. 

We came upon this herd of domesticated bison, chomping away in a field.

Aha! Judging by the name of the bison farm, we must be approaching our destination. The high point is actually on this ranch . . . 

. . . which kindly permits visitors to drive down a dirt road to the site and charges a mere $3 entrance fee, which is paid on the honor system (which means they probably don't get very many payments).

And here we are! Panorama Point, aka Constable Mountain, located near the Wyoming and Colorado borders. As you can see, it was a cold and windy October day. You can also see that this is not a mountain nor even a hill, but just a swell in the field--if that!

It was actually surprising to learn that the elevation here is 5,424 feet. This is truly the "High Plains"--or the western part of the Great Plains that leads up to the Rocky Mountains.

You know, there are some pretty interesting things in very out-of-the-way places in this vast country of ours.

Besides the stone monument, the Point includes a guest register and a bench. 

I got a kick out of leafing through the guest register. Someone had been here six days before us on their honeymoon! The spread-out dates of the different entries show that this site does not get a lot of traffic.

The guest register notebook actually adds five feet to the official elevation. Oops.

Bob has been obsessed by climbing all the state high points for years. He has climbed (or driven to) 22 so far, and I have been with him at 16 of those. The hardest one he has done is Mt. Rainier (14,411') in Washington State, and the hardest two I have done with him are Mt. Whitney (14,505') in California and Mt. Elbert (14,439') in Colorado. Panorama Point was a breeze to get to compared to those others, but the dirt roads were a pain.

The reason I bring that up is because "highpointing" is actually a thing. The bench at Panorama Point, for example, was donated by members of the Highpointers Club, whose mission is, among other things, "to promote climbing to the highest point in each of the fifty (50) states."  (See https://highpointers.org/)

Just in case you were wondering where YOUR state high point is:

We had one more place to visit before heading for the corral, er, I mean hotel.

You'll be seeing more dirt roads in this and my next few posts about this trip.

Our next destination: Pawnee Buttes. Check out that sky!

Here's a close-up. Isn't that white stripe around the middle interesting?

Too bad we didn't have time to get out on the trail. 

But after seeing it from one side, we took 30 or 40 dirt roads (a direct quote from my notes) to see the buttes from the other side.

"Dorothy? Dorothy?" Where are you, Dorothy?"

The sun was getting awfully close to the horizon, and we had an hour to go to get to Fort Morgan, Colorado, our stopping place for the day.

Still not sure about the politics of the residents of this area. What do you think? I don't think we saw a single Biden campaign sign.

We stopped for some Greek food at Elaine's Place in Fort Morgan before heading to the Best Western Overland Inn.