Back to Driving

It was a full day of driving - from the middle of Kansas west to the Colorado state line, then south along the eastern edge of Colorado, down through a little corner of the Oklahoma panhandle, and then west into New Mexico. We saw some interesting things along the way . . .

In Kansas we were still passing lots of farms and wheat and corn fields until we got close to the Colorado border and also just inside Colorado where we started seeing cattle feeding pens . . .

Please excuse this photo - it's hard to get a good shot when you're cruising down the highway at 70 MPH - but you'll get the idea. There were a LOT of cows here!!! I think they use these pens to get the cattle ready for market. Little do the poor cows know they are enjoying their last meals!!!

And, for the first time in a long time, we were seeing pretty blue skies and fluffy clouds again, instead of overcast and rain!

For most of the time we've been on this trip, we've been seeing news reports about Storm Chasers - slightly crazy people who drive around trying to document tornadoes, thunder storms, etc. Luckily we have not been in the path of any of these really dangerous storms, but we've been following the progress of the Storm Chasers on TV. This evening the TV reported that heavy rain and extreme thunderstorms are expected in the exact portion of Colorado that we just passed through this morning. Which explains why, as we were heading south through that little corner of Oklahoma, we passed at least 50 of these storm-chaser trucks heading north into the part of Colorado where we had just been - getting ready to chase that storm . . .

I'm so glad that we got out of that area before the storm hit! Our timing couldn't have been more perfect! Whew!

Fifty miles or so after we crossed the New Mexico state line, we decided to check out Capulin Volcano National Monument. This is the remnant of a volcano that was active some 56,000 to 62,000 years ago. The cone is now pretty much covered with vegetation after all these years of inactivity (it's totally dormant now), but the cool thing is that you can walk down into the cone.

This is the cone from the outside

This is how it looks from the edge looking down into the cone

You can see how much vegetation has grown over the lava

Of course, much to John's annoyance, I wanted to take the trail and walk down into the cone - he opted to wait for me at the top.

This is taken from the bottom looking back up

The sun was right overhead, so it was hard to get a good shot

Once at the bottom, there was still a lot of lava visible

Back in the car, this is what the surrounding area looks like . . .

You can see some other cones -

the one in front has collapsed but the one in the back is fully intact

They say that even though the one volcano is dormant, it is possible that another volcano in the area could become active, but most likely not in our lifetime.

And, for the first time in a month, we started seeing mountains . . .

We're must be getting closer to home . . .