Imunna jump in a crater

Today I drove from Wichita Falls to Pueblo, Colorado. Obviously, it's the orange line on the Google Earth map in the last post.

I took a picture of my clean car before I left. I got on the road at 1:45, which isn't too bad. I had to have one last lunch with Tina and Laura before I could leave. I guess I missed a good rainy day at home.















I stocked up good for the trip. Yum! (Fear not for me--most of it will make it back to WF.)















It rained all the way from betwen Electra and Vernon to right after Amarillo. The panhandle towns are stinky. The smell waffled between urinal cakes and mercaptan. Here's to fertilizer and oil fields! This picture is of the real hilly area north of Amarillo. I don't know how to take a photo that accurately conveys the degree of hillyness that there was. There was also excessive yellow, which makes me wonder why they named the town Amarillo. It was pretty.















This is Dumas. I think I might have stayed at this hotel before...















The first glimpse of mountain is in this picture. It's directly at the end of the road. It looked large, very unlike it does in this picture...if you can even see it! The city is Texline, just on the clean side of the New Mexico border. The terrain had resumed its flatness quickly after Amarillo.















New Mexico's license plates say "Land of Enchantment," but it's really the land of the trailer house. At that, not even double-wides. Here is Clayton, NM, about 10 miles into the state. The mountain, which is more visible in the photo (but still remarkable how it doesn't show to scale!) is Rabbit Ear Mountain. Clayton's elevation is 5053. Elevations are posted on city limits signs in New Mexico. I'm wondering now why it's a BFD that Denver's a mile high? Pretentious Coloradoans! Here I am, barely out of Texas, and I'm nearly that high already. I suppose it is catchier than "Queen City of the Plains" and "Capital of the Rocky Mountain Empire." In case you were wondering, Wichita Falls is at 954 feet.















Here's Sierra Grande. We're getting to the bigger mountains now. This one's tall enough at 8720 feet for water vapor to condense into clouds as they pass over the peak. It's a shield volcano, and it and Capulin are the first two volcanos on my trip! I don't know if Mount St. Helens will be able to compare.















Capulin Mountain is a cinder cone right across from Sierra Grande and you have to go around the base of Grande before you can see it. I barely made it there before twilight. I'm glad this was the first day of DST, or I would have missed it! I like Capulin. It's not overly big at 8182 feet, but looks obviously like a traditional volcano.
















I was too tardy to get any photos of the most beautiful part of the day (second to lunch, that is). As I approached Raton, twilight was nearly done and there was still a faint orange glow over the Rockies, while the city's lights twinkled beneath. The outline of the purple mountain tops against the orange sky for the majority of the horizon was...indescribable. You know how I stare and am fascinated at the sky and stars, right? Mountains, and especially volcanoes, are a very close second. I guess I was enchanted.

current music: B-52's: Lava