With the days getting warmer, Dave and I are starting to think about what hikes and day trips we want to tackle this year. Pawnee National Grassland has been on our list of places to visit for a while now. The grassland is located in Colorado’s eastern plains, and spans over 193,000 acres. It was once home to frontier homesteads until harsh winters and drought crushed any hope of growing crops. Today it’s federally managed, and is established as a mixed use area for recreation, cattle grazing and oil production.
We’re not sure why it took us this long to visit because it’s just under two hours away. Once off the main highway, the closer we got, the more sparse the landscape became. In between the tilled crop fields we passed a few modest towns, which obviously catered to the surrounding farms with businesses advertising things like crop insurance.
Upon entering the national grassland, farmland turned to prairie and the pavement switched to rugged dirt roads. Everything was still dormant from winter except for the large green spikes of yucca plants. To describe the grassland as the ‘middle of nowhere’ felt like an understatement. I’m not sure we’ve ever been somewhere so expansive with no landmarks and no sense of direction.
The main attraction in the grassland is the Pawnee Buttes, two 300-foot buttes sticking up over the flat prairie. As we followed signs pointing us where to go, Dave had to carefully dodge the massive trucks maintaining the oil wells. Despite the sketchy road conditions, they were driving full speed, leaving a massive white cloud of dust that completely obstructed our view for a few seconds as we passed.
Once safely at the trailhead, we hiked the short path to the overlook. The buttes were as majestic as they could be with a windmill farm as their backdrop. Part of the trail was closed due to raptors nesting along the cliffs, so we wandered around the surrounding area, soaking in the feeling of being alone in the wild west, before returning back home. And rather than posting photos, we thought it would be fun to create another short vlog. Enjoy!
