Mt. Sunflower Revisited
I was visiting Goodland, KS to attend my Grandmother’s Memorial Service. It was another day until the funeral and I and my family members were dying for something to do in this small Midwestern town. I said; let’s go to the state highpoint, Mt. Sunflower. We then got ready and went.
We drove West down Old US 24 to Kanorado and then headed straight south. Along the way we passed an old sugar factory. Lots of cattle were seen too. It was a very gray over cast day. Visibility kept getting worse and worse the closer we got to Mt. Sunflower.
We got a huge surprise. About 7 miles or so north of Mt. Sunflower we saw a horse out in a field. My cousin stopped and I got out and started taking pictures of the horse. This horse was gazing at me. Then out of no where a white horse came and started running towards me. It must have thought I had food. It was a white horse that came within 20 feet of me. A fence was between me and the horses. I was able to grab some great photos of the horses.
Continuing our drive south we then started seeing signs for Mt. Sunflower. We saw a sign saying 6 miles to Mt. Sunflower. Later we saw a sign saying 1 mile and we turned west towards sunflower. Finally we were by the turnoff to go the last half mile to the Kansas State High point. With so much snow though, you couldn’t drive the rest of the way. My brother, I, and my cousin started hiking towards Mt. Sunflower, though we could not see it. Visibility was only about 100 yards at the most.
Finally, after about 10 minutes we could see the markers and Mt. Sunflower. IT was very cold, about 20 F and windy. I left my gloves in the car, where another cousin was waiting for us. We tried signing the register but it was wet and our pen wasn’t very good. We then signed a card of my cousins and put it in the register. This was my 2nd visit to this summit; last one was in October 2000. There was a nice new register that was in a mailbox that said “Mt. Sunflower 4039.”
In the distance we could hear our cousin honking the horn so we could tell where he was. Luckily there was a fence just east of the summit and we just followed the fence all the way back to the road. It was nice to finally get back to the car and warm up. This felt like a true journey to Mt. Sunflower since we couldn’t drive all the way up to it and hike to it with nearly no visibility made it a hike to remember.
External Links
My 1st State Highpoint My 1st Trip to Mt. Sunflower
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