Just a note to anyone considering staying overnight in Clayton, NM. Don't. Unless you have earplugs or take your hearing aids out at night (like me). The train runs right thru town and starts rolling around dinner time and a new one comes thru every hour or so, horns blaring. Apparently no one here objects. Maybe a place with double pane windows would be better. Kind of a shame, because for a dinky place in the middle of nowhere, it was actually quite nice. Except for the night trains.
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A tree is growing out of one of the 'lava pimples' near
the Visitor Center. |
On a cheerier note, we had an energetic day today. It was raining a bit as we headed out, but we drove out of it before we got to the Capulin Volcano National Monument. It is a cinder cone volcano that last erupted about 42,000 years ago. There are several trails and we did all but one. The parking lot of the highest hike was at 7800 feet of elevation and the rim trail went up 305 feet from there -- and partway back down and up again. It was rated as 'moderate' and it was nicely paved, but going that much up when you are not adapted to the elevation made it more like strenuous. Our other big hike, the 'Boca Trail' started out much lower, maybe 7200 feet (Endomondo hiccuped and couldn't track us on GPS, so we don't know for sure). This trail was listed as strenuous to moderate and even though it was twice as long, it was lots easier. From the top of the rim, the views of the area were spectacular. We also did a short nature trail with some interesting rock formations where lava sort of squeezed out at a week spot -- sort of a lava pimple on a flat plain.
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| There are a lot of extinct volcanoes in the area. |
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| Jim hiking the rim trail with the plains far below. |
Back in the car, we headed to Taos. We went thru the Cimmaron Canyon state park, which was beyond lovely -- very steep cliffs, bubbly little river and wonderfully contrasting trees on the mountains -- lots of dark green firs interspersed with bright yellow aspens and birches -- totally spectacular.
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| More lovely 4-lane 70mph road in remote New Mexico |
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| Our first view of the interspersed green and yellow trees |
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The aspens close up. We saw birches later with the
same bright yellow leaves. |
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| The Taos main square |
Taos itself is a bit of a disappointment. After reading about the 'Santa Fake' building style in Santa Fe, I had expected better in Taos. Maybe all the downtown buildings are original, but I wouldn't want to bet on it. It is very touristy -- sort of a southwestern Carmel. We did have lovely lunch and walked around the downtown for an hour before heading to our hotel. This month is a big one for Taos -- apparently people come from all over to see the trees change color like going to New Hampshire or Vermont back east. So the place is totally busy -- heading north to our hotel at 3:30, we were stunned at the traffic backup going south through town. Taos does have good restaurants! Our yummy lunch was followed by an interesting dinner -- I had buffalo filet mignon -- very tasty.
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