Thursday, 4 November 2021
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| today's route |
On the road
A sign told me I was on the Ports to Plains Corridor. I think it was Colorado when I last saw one of those signs. This is the route that runs from Laredo to Denver.
I saw an odd slice of life. In the area between the road and a fence, I saw a rough-looking guy standing next to and looking at a large circle of burned ground. That's it. I didn't see a car or truck or even a bicycle or a horse that might have carried him to this isolated spot. There was nothing around but mountains and yellow grass and fencing. I didn't see a tent so I guess that burned spot wasn't a campfire he'd started. There wasn't anything to suggest why the area was burned, or why it was a circle, for that matter. Just the guy and the burned area. Odd.
The road from Raton heading east felt like it was climbing the whole way - which makes sense since Raton sits at 6,680' and the visitor center at Capulin Volcano sits at 7,832'. They're less than 30 miles apart so, yeah, the road was climbing.
Capulin Volcano National Monument
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| Capulin Volcano |
At the visitor center, the ranger first asked me how big my RV was. I'd already seen signs that said trailers were prohibited on the drive to the crater, but the ranger said my 24' was okay to go. She warned me that it was a one-lane road in one place, that there were sharp turns, and there were patches of ice and slush here and there. As soon as I heard "ice and slush" I gave up the idea of driving to the top. I really wanted to go up there but there's no way I could think it reasonable to voluntarily try to drive my RV on ice on a mountain road with sharp turns. Instead, I chose the video they offered.
This video was as good as the other National Park Service videos I've seen, meaning very interesting and helpful. (As an aside, however much money the park service gets in its budget, it's definitely not enough to account for the excellent services they provide to the enormous number of citizens and foreign visitors who rely on them.)
After I watched this video, I went back to the ranger and said, "Did that video just say that this wasn't a mountain to start with but instead just a hole in the ground?" And she said yes, and explained to me what had happened. This whole northeastern area of New Mexico, from Raton to Clayton near the Texas border, was once an active volcanic field. A hundred or more volcanoes erupted in this area, with the Capulin Volcano the most recent - between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago.
And it was indeed started from a crack in the Earth's crust that allowed lava to flow out. In this case the lava flowed with such force that it spewed into the air, falling back to the ground as cinders that accumulated around the opening. The lava continued to spew, the cinders continued to fall, and a mountain was created out of those cinders where there had been flat earth before.
There were 4 later lava flows, but instead of coming out the cone, they flowed out from the base of the new mountain from several vents. The lava flowed in every direction from the mountain, eventually covering almost 16 square miles. The national monument boundaries are quite small, covering only the immediate volcano area. But the lava is still there.
After a long time, lichens began to form on the lava rocks and cinders. They were able to break down the rocks and create soil. Soil allowed plants to grow, and when the plants moved in, the animals followed, and people followed the animals. I had no idea lichens were so integral a factor in the development of life, but they sure were here.
This volcano was a waystation on the Santa Fe Trail, but indigenous people followed the bison through this area for millennia.
To me, volcanoes mean earthquakes - tectonic plate activity - but I don't think of New Mexico as a hotbed of earthquakes so I asked the ranger. She said NM has 2 fault lines - one where the Rio Grande flows north to south (past Taos, for instance), and another that runs across this area and runs east to west near Cimarron. She said Cimarron had a 4.5 earthquake 5 years ago and just last month had one that was 3.6. The USGS says there's a 15% chance of a major earthquake in that area within the next 50 years, which was surely unsettling news to those who live nearby.
Dogs aren't allowed on most of the trails around here, but the ranger said I could take them on the short nature trail near the visitor center, so I did and learned a little more.
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| chokecherry in winter |
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| basalt |
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| lichens on the rocks |
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| the yellow grass I've been seeing for 2 days |
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| lava squeeze up |
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I saw this information in the video they showed in the visitor center, but seeing it for myself helps me make sense of it. The lichens growing on the rocks break them down; dirt collects in the crevices, and then seeds take root. And from a barren rocky landscape, you get a mountain's worth of grass and bushes and trees. Amazing.
And that lava squeeze up - I'd never have thought it was anything but a big rock, but it's actually a place where lava pooched up out of the ground, which is how the big rock got created. This was once an extremely active place, geologically speaking.
And it still is. The dogs and I saw a couple of deer at the parking area who, fortunately for me, decided to go somewhere without dogs.
This historical marker pretty well summarizes this site.
Back on the road
I headed back west toward Raton, with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, with snow on their tops, clearly in view ahead. I saw these mountains when I was in southern Colorado - they're the most southerly part of the Rockies, running down past Santa Fe.
I intended to get on I-25 at Raton, but Google insisted I couldn't. It gave me 2 choices: either take one of their crazy shortcuts that would begin with me turning onto a road with no name, or go north on I-25 for many miles before making a u-turn to go south. Instead, I did the ordinary thing of crossing the highway, turning left and entering the interstate. What a concept. I can't even imagine why Google thought I couldn't do that. And now they agree that what I did is not only possible, they don't even suggest either of those 2 routes. Weird.
Eastern NM's NPR station, that they say also serves west Texas, has NPR news until 8 AM (and presumably after 4 or 5 PM) but the entire rest of the day they play elevator music. It's weird to hear this stuff from public radio, that still has a reputation for being a little high-brow. As examples (and these are mostly instrumental versions, or singing by someone other than the original/best known artist): Fool On The Hill, Some Enchanted Evening, I'll Never Find Another You, Scarborough Fair, Take Good Care of My Baby (where's Bobby Vee when we need him?) - you get the picture. Nothing wrong with this music, but when it doesn't come from the original artists, there's only just so much of it I can take.
I passed the turn for Fort Union National Monument. For some reason, the name sounded familiar so I looked it up. Once an important point on the Santa Fe Trail, it now looks like a place worth visiting for those interested in old military forts or adobe ruins. Here's a link with some photos of the building ruins - and they're in much better shape than those made of wood that I've seen elsewhere. https://www.atlasobscura.com/fort-union-national-monument
I saw a lot of pronghorn on the drive south.
A sign told me I was entering the Pecos River Watershed, flowing to the Rio Grande, an idea that surprised me, despite having crossed the Rio Grande a couple of days ago. I'm just so used to thinking of the Rio Grande being the border between Texas and Mexico that I haven't adjusted yet to the idea that it flows north/south through a chunk of Colorado and all of New Mexico before it hits Texas at El Paso and then becomes a border.
And then I came to Las Vegas, elevation 6,415'. I didn't get into town but was curious about where the name came from. I still don't know but found this fascinating account of the early days of the town. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/nm-lasvegas For instance, in 1879 it was the largest town between Independence, MO, and San Francisco, CA, along the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Rail route. And it quickly developed a reputation as wild as Tombstone's until the townspeople threatened to lynch anyone who broke the law. Who knew?
The KOA here was on a steep hillside with plenty of xeriscaping and no grass to speak of. The owner warned me that the entire lower part of the park was rife with stickers - "sticker season" he called it - and recommended we walk in the upper part. Since we were staying only the one night, it wasn't much of a hardship, though Gracie and I were both huffing and puffing a bit on those hills.
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