Whole lotta nuthin'/Day 4
There's a lot of space out here.
Cloud cover got us last night. I went out at around 10 pm local time last night and couldn't see the sky. No used to go out and try to do photos if that's the case. We stayed in, Laurie read and I studied maps for places to scout for photo locations. We had a nice and quiet evening and caught our breath. This morning we scouted some of the locations I had noted on the maps and have a few very promising spots to shoot tonight. The sky also looks MUCH clearer. We have our fingers crossed.
At the top of the volcano!
It is very remote where we are. The "town" of Capulin has a post office, a small country store , and a RV park. That's it. The land is still wild here. Farmers put up fences and have ranches, but this is more to tame their livestock than the land. With few exceptions, it's very much like it has been for thousands of years. Roads shown on maps turn out to be gravel if you're lucky, dirt if you're not.
Looking southwest
We rode a loop out through the countryside searching for locations. Things are deceptively distant here. You can see them, but find out when you head towards them that they're 20 miles away. We did a short loop through ranch country this morning that didn't seem far, but turned out to be 27 miles. We saw tons of prong horn antelope, several baby antelope, and found a few locations that we hope will bear fruit tonight. There are people actually living out there but they are very far between.
On the trail around the volcano rim
After our scouting session we went to the Capulin Volcano National Monument, which we can look out of the camper and see. It is an extinct volcano cone which last erupted around 60,000 years ago. This entire area is a volcanic field, and all of the rock is volcanic stone. There are also lots of other "humps and bumps" in the landscape that were volcanic vents , cones, lava flows, etc. We see the same kind of rocks that we found in Iceland and the Azores, two other volcanic areas we have visited.
An idea of how vast it is here. And yes, all those mountains and humps are volcanic.
We put on our masks and entered the ranger station. We found that all the rangers were wearing masks as well as the other people in the ranger station . Everyone stopped to pay the entry fee to visit the volcano and most people were socially distancing and wearing masks. We headed up the road to the top of the volcano and parked in the small area up top.
Laurie wanted to hike the rim, around a 1 mile circle. I reluctantly agreed, and was reminded very quickly how high up we are. We are in the "high desert" and our campground is at around 6800 feet above sea level and the top of the volcano was close to 8000. Laurie did fine, but I huffed and puffed in the thin atmosphere. It was a very nice walk with fantastic vistas, cactus flowers, funny looking lizards, and other hikers whom we gave wide berth.
Laurie wanted to hike the rim, around a 1 mile circle. I reluctantly agreed, and was reminded very quickly how high up we are. We are in the "high desert" and our campground is at around 6800 feet above sea level and the top of the volcano was close to 8000. Laurie did fine, but I huffed and puffed in the thin atmosphere. It was a very nice walk with fantastic vistas, cactus flowers, funny looking lizards, and other hikers whom we gave wide berth.
Cactus flowers are in bloom now!
A side note- I planned the trip to try and avoid altitude sickness, something I grappled with on one of my previous trips. My plan was to come to Capulin, acclimate to the altitude here, move up to our next stop around 8000 feet, and our final stop at around 10000 ft. I'm hoping that these days of acclimation will help us adjust more naturally to these large changes in elevation. As I found out before, altitude sickness is real, and I don't want to play that game again.
Hangin' out at the post office in Folsom, New Mexico!
We took a ride north from the volcano around a 30 mile or so loop to the town of Folsom, topped off with gas in the town of Des Moines, and back to our camper. I love riding around in the desert and we covered around 80 miles today. If we climbed the nearest hillside we could see where we were staying. Nothing was very far......or so it seemed. When you can see a hundred miles or more everything seems close.
We came back to the camper late afternoon, sat outside and worked on our photos from today. Hopefully tonight we'll finally get some decent star photos!
Tomorrow we move to Colorado. We'll post the next one when we can!
We came back to the camper late afternoon, sat outside and worked on our photos from today. Hopefully tonight we'll finally get some decent star photos!
Tomorrow we move to Colorado. We'll post the next one when we can!