Kansas's Mount Sunflower was an easy side trip and welcome break from an Indiana to Colorado August drive.

After hearing from a few sources about how bad the gravel roads were to this highpoint, I was pleasantly surprised to find they must have been graded and repaired at some point. The roads were some of the smoothest gravel roads I'd ever driven down, and finding the highpoint was extremely easy. Along the way we passed fields of sunflowers and biplanes crop dusting fields.

A prairie view at the Kansas high point.

Having spent the previous 12 hours sitting in a car, I parked at the cattle gate and we walked the short distance to the actual summit. Dodging cattle droppings along the way, we short walk felt longer than it had initially looked from the car (maybe because we were used to covering distances at 70 miles an hour for so long).

A few other people were at the highpoint when we got there. One fellow, observing our bipedal approach, asked if we didn't count them unless we hiked to the highpoint. I assured him our walk had more to do with stretching tired legs than highpointing style.

We took our turn with the summit register, and took in the continuous horizon and expansive skies. The highpoint itself is an interesting combination of historical marker and whimsy. Besides a marker honoring the first settlers of the area, there was sunflower statue made of railroad spikes. The trail register warned of getting altitude sickness, and then explained how Mount Sunflower doesn't rise high enough from the surrounding land to really qualify as a mountain.

After a few pictures and all the other highpointers had left, we headed back to our car and headed on to Colorado.