A while back my mom started a Facebook group to highlight her travels. And I suggested that we visit the closest mountain to where we live here in South Central Kansas. With phones that take decent pictures we headed south when our schedules aligned
It was kind of interesting to see the wind farms in Harper County. Mom has some pretty hard core libertarian views. So when she saw me staring at the windmills we had some interesting conversations. (I personally try to stay neutrally aligned to political parties)
We were about twenty minutes out from our destination and we had yet to see any hills greater than what we'd see in most of Kansas. Before we left my roommate (who is a trucker, so he has travel experience) had told me that a trip to Oklahoma would just look like Kansas. And most of our trip did look like the highways between home and going over to Wichita. There were times when the trees and hills would open up and do what I call, "Let your eyes see for a while." The Great Plains are derided for a lack of beauty. I do not share that opinion. When it opens up, the rolling hills below the heavy grey clouds are poetry that cannot be described with words.
But in the distance I did see a something off in the distance.
Arriving at our destination
This shirt and I need to have a conversation about that gut
Mom was "really" excited for the possibility of Rattlesnakes (yes, that was sarcasm)
kind of unfortunate that the first step that I made in our southern neighbor looked like something my mothers dog would produce.
but interesting to see the layers of sediment that the ancient seaway left behind.
Nature is an artist!
The grey sky, red soil, and green foliage was just breathtaking and there were pretty flowers along the trail up the mountain as well.
Mom seemed to be disappointed that she couldn't make it up the stairs. But I do think that she made the right decision to not continue up the trail that we were on because this is what the end of the trail looked like. The stairs (which I joked that they looked like they were there since the Kaiser was still around <I didn't think to take a picture of the stairs, but they were seriously sus >) ended in a clump of rock which it looked like it was expected for people to just climb over
Mom caught a picture of me slipping on the top of the rock face. Seeing me stumble and "Crawl like a monkey" up the end of the trail scared her too much for me to stay up at the top of the trail for me to explore very much.
I heard her scream, "YOU GET YOUR FUCKING ASS BACK DOWN HERE!" And knowing how much my mom doesn't like to cuss I decided to come back down before I saw very much of the top of the butte. I had the mental image of MAMMA BEAR racing up the side of the mountain with handfulls of rattlesnakes to "save" her baby boy. I did take a moment to look around to look and imagine what the interior seaway would have looked like as it receded
There was another trail that Mom joked that was more her level
It was nice that there was historical information on this trail.
But we were kind of disappointed that these two trails were all that was there. Unfortunately the GPS had led us to the two shortest trails
We decided that we will have to go back and explore some more.
But first I think I'll have to go without "Scaredy-Mama" So I can see the top of that hill
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