Mother's Day Road Trip: Panorama Point

The marker at Panorama Point, designating its status as the highest point in Nebraska.

Good morning and Happy Saturday! For once, I slept in and after a few cups of weekend coffee, I'm ready to conquer the next few days. As I promised in my post earlier this week, today I'll begin my posts about the Mother's Day road trip the kids and I took this past weekend.

The three of us are members of the Highpointers Club, so reaching the highest point in each state is a goal of ours. My goal is to reach the highest point in each of the lower 48 as I have no desire to climb the high points in Hawaii nor Alaska. Well, maybe Hawaii, but definitely not Alaska - Mt McKinley takes a month and a drive I do not possess. But, I digress. Our first destination on this trip was Panorama Point, the highest point in our state of Nebraska. It's nearly seven hours from our home as Omaha sits on the eastern end of the state, while Panorama Point sits on the western end. I woke the kids up and managed to successfully get them out of the house and on the road by 5 a.m. 

We made a few stops for gas and picnic lunch - I packed all of our food - before reaching Panorama Point around noon or so. We gained an hour as we headed into a different time zone. If you've never been there, it's located in a desolate area of the plains, and, man, was it windy. There was wind like I've never experienced it before, so taking a picture was quite hilarious. 

It's also on private property (as are a handful of other states' high points) and it costs $3.00 per person to enter. I really should have looked up the high point first to find this out ahead of time, as I didn't have a single bit of cash on me. I didn't drive out all that way to not go to it, however, so we entered anyway. I'm going to send that farmer $9, though, as I feel kinda bad.

The high winds of the prairie are most definitely why we saw tons of wind turbines all around us. 

My daughter goofing around on the windy plains of Nebraska.

This is a shot of the surrounding area, wind turbines included. 

People generally want to visit mountainous regions of the states, but they're doing a disservice by overlooking the plains. There's something magical about a place where you can see so far into the distance, that the earth seems to literally meet the sky. Someday, I hope to backpack across it.

I'll be posting about our time at the Pawnee Buttes next time, a place where the grasslands of the plains begin to merge with the Rocky Mountains in the west. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Get outside and enjoy the beauty of wherever you live.