Family Vacation - Capulin Volcano

After the Cadillac Ranch, we drove to Colorado. We were very surprised to see this sign. 

When you do your mapping by saying "Hey Siri, take me to Colorado", sometimes you are surprised where you go. I guess I didn't ever look to see that we would cross through New Mexico. 

We were glad we did though. We were driving through the country and admiring the increasing amounts of mountains. Then we saw a tiny sign saying "Capulin Volcano National Monument". We debated turning back and checking it out for a minute and decided to go for it. It was well worth the stop! We enjoyed some of the most beautiful views of our trip.

This is on the top of the volcano looking into the hole of it. 

We hiked from the parking lot (after a very scary drive up the mountain) to the top of the volcano. We wanted to hike all the way around but did not because we were mysteriously tired (we later realized it was due to less oxygen in the high atmosphere). We were also concerned about an approaching storm. After the scary drive up, I certainly didn't want to go down in pouring rain. 

You can see the rainstorm in the background. Later, we drove through this on the highway and could not see at all in spite of wipers on high! I have never driven in rain so heavy.

Lizzy was nervous about the drop off. 

Texas is about 600 feet above sea level. Most of the rest of our trip was spent over a mile above sea level. It took us three days before we realized we were so tired and out of breath because of the lack of oxygen in Colorado and on the volcano. 

The scary roads. This is almost straight down.