Capulin Volcano

A Random Little Volcano in the Middle of New Mexico

I've been posting about Israel a lot recently, and I want to bring it back to the USA for just a little while, an ode to my home if you will.  Not that I am homesick or anything, although I am starting to miss my kitchen aid stand mixer.  Last fall I went on an absurdly long road trip with a National Park Annual Pass.  The possession of said annual pass led to us stopping at every national park and monument that the pass granted us entry to.  Were it not for this pass, we probably would have kept driving right past Capulin Volcano National Monument.  

The entrance to Capulin Volcano National Monument.

 Capulin is one of the smallest national parks/monuments I have visited.  Our entire visit lasted about 45 minutes.  We drove from the prairie floor to the top of the extinct volcano, took some photos, walked around, and the drove back down.  There is only one road in the monument and a couple of extremely short (lees than a quarter mile) hiking trails.  We did one of them.

A bunch of volcanic rocks in the extinct caldera of Capulin.

The hike we ventured onto goes from the small parking lot on the rim of the volcano down into the extinct caldera where a pile of volcanic rocks wait at the bottom.  The entire hike required about fifteen minutes.  Capulin was preserved by the national parks system, because it is supposedly an excellent example of a cinder cone volcano.  While it may be a good example for this area where there are not a lot of new cinder cones, it is no where as awesome as the cinder cones at Haleakala or Lassen National Parks.

A view of the Raton-Clayton volcanic field from the top of Capulin  It is easy to see all the small volcanoes popping up out of the otherwise flat landscape..

Perhaps the best part of the trip to the top of Capulin was the view of the other cinder cone volcanoes scattered across the Raton-Clayton volcanic field, thought to have been formed by a hot spot in the earth's mantle (much like Hawaii).  Then there are the cows.

Cows chilling on the side of the road on our way in to Capulin.

To enter Capulin we had to drive through a pasture of sorts.  I am not sure if the pasture is actually a part of the monument or not (probably not), but it made for some close up photos of friendly and cuddly looking cows.