A Rare Season in the Sandhills

Anyone who has been through Nebraska's Sandhills knows it's a very special place. The vastness of the region -- about 19,000 square miles -- is amazing.  This is first and foremost ranch country. Towns are miles apart and the roads are long stretches of asphalt surrounded by sand dunes covered in grass, hence the name: Sandhills.
Trees are an endangered species. Windmills dot the landscape along with wet meadows, evidence of the massive Ogallala Aquifer seeping from below the ground. Towns are a welcome sight and people -- they are the friendliest to be found anywhere.
I have been to the Sandhills many times but last week I saw something that I had never seen before. Almost everywhere you looked there were sunflowers. They were growing along roadsides. They covered hills -- sometimes as far as the eye could see. For a minute I thought I was in Kansas and not Nebraska.
We talked to a woman outside of Brownlee and she told us the sunflowers were the result of a drought last year and good rains this year. She had never seen so many sunflowers.
If you happen to be in the Sandhills, take the road to Brownlee, a county road south of Valentine in Cherry County that connects Nebraska 97 and U.S. 83. It's a single lane county road with good pavement and hardly no traffic. We saw one pickup. The drive is well worth it because it cuts through the heart of the Sandhills.
A funny story: We were driving down the Brownlee road and saw two dark shapes ahead. We thought they were bicyclists, then walkers, then coyotes, no wolves! The black shapes turned out to be a black lab and a sheep dog out for their morning walk. They looked at us kind of funny -- like what are you doing here?
We said hello and kept going down the road.