16-Jul-2024 -- As a run-up to my 77th birthday, we headed to the great plains to climb the highest peaks in both North and South Dakota. Other than on visits to all of the nearby national parks, we had not previously spent much time in this neck of the woods. The last 15 months spent living with acute myeloid leukemia has driven home the point I am now at best a semi-retired confluence hunter, and my best days with this hobby/obsession are behind me. However, we could not help but notice that once we left I-76 and turned north at Sterling CO, until our return to the Denver airport, we would be in the vicinity of the 103rd meridian, a longitude we had not previously documented. Closer study revealed incorporating them into our core itinerary, it would not only be possible, but entirely reasonable to visit four different latitude crossings of 103°W on four different days, in four separate states (41°N, 42°N, 44°N, & 46°N). Previously, DCP stalwarts Gavin Roy, Ross Finlayson, and Joseph Kerski have recorded nine trips to these four points, so they are all well documented (Kerski has visited all four, two on multiple occasions). However, the most recent visits at each were pre-Covid pandemic, 2019 or earlier. The time seemed propitious for an update! And with my success this trip, I now have visited a confluence in 39 of the 47 states containing one.

Our journey to 41°N, 103°W begins in Mississippi:

After an early morning drive to the Memphis airport, airline schedule changes and weather delays conspire to put us in a rental car later than we originally intended. It’s already late afternoon as we head northeast on the interstate. Past Sterling, we turn north on CO 113. After the community of Peetz, right angle turns onto gravel roads take us right on CO 78, then left on CO 61. We coast to a stop at the 41st parallel. The confluence is a short walk to due east into a field. Satellite reception is so good, no GPS dance is required.

The late afternoon sun baths the fields in rich colors. The only sound is from the spinning of the nearby wind turbines (a friend back home texts us as a child she called them “winter-bines”), erected after the turn of the century, and the major change from the view during the first DCP visit in 1999. After spending a long day in cars and on planes, we were tempted to linger a while, but we were “burning daylight,” and still had work to do.

In 2022 we ducked in and out of Nebraska to visit (i.e., “bag”) the state’s highest point, Panorama Point at 5,424’. We recently learned the appropriately named “High Point Welcome Center” in nearby Kimball will present an official document commemorating such a feat. We contacted the staff and learned the facility would be closed as we passed through, however, they agreed to prepare certificates for our state highpoint #33 and leave them in an outside rack. We arrived to retrieve them just before sunset. What a feeling of success to be officially certified!

An hour later, we ended our long day in Gering, Nebraska.