Kienle Family Cross Country Motorhome Adventure travel blog

It's cold at 8000 feet!

Our trusty Motor Home at Capulin

Pucker factor driving

Baking our first cake in our motor home

Gaining just a little more altitude

2 tails


11/6/08

We decided that it was time to make serious tracks south today. We started off from the Weckwerth’s since they were all at work or school anyway. I got to drive my second 100 miles in the trip! We drove straight south to the edge of New Mexico to get warm as quickly as possible, but it was, as usual, a case of “out of the fire and into the frying pan” since we didn’t lose any altitude at all, and, in fact, gained quite a bit. So it was that we found ourselves at the end of afternoon driving toward a huge volcanic cone in the Capulin National Monument. This was a 60,000 year old volcano that juts out of the surrounding flat land. It really looked a bit like Hawaiian volcanoes complete with grass covered lava flows. The lady at the visitor center told us that we’d be fine driving up to the top. See pics! Florian calls this pucker factor. It was all but terrifying to drive this behemoth up the steep, narrow, windy, snow drifted road. We thought going up was bad until we started down! At the top, it was incredible! It is 1,000 feet high, steep sided and wind swept. There are several trails that give visitors access to different points of interest. The one we tried went up the side and around the top of the cone. We didn’t make it too far with Livianna as it was cold and windy and it really was somewhat frightening to be up on that trail with her. They close the park down well before dark so that the Ranger can drive up to the top each day and check to make sure that everyone has come down. Florian briefly thought about riding his bike down until it occurred to him that I would be driving down and then he changed his mind. Things that make you go hmmmm.

We stopped for a bite to eat and then drove over to Clayton to camp for the evening. Arriving after dark, we had no idea what kind of place we’d landed in but were happy to stop for the night and have a snack and get snuggly.


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