🌞 Beautiful sunny morning. Deer all over as we pulled out at 8:30am. Somber morning as we say goodbye to beautiful Colorado! Another favorite area of ours that holds so many memories is Spanish Peaks area. As soon as we saw it we were flooded with memories of our first trip in 1981! 💕 We hiked our first major hike from Alvarado campground in Westcliff to Venable-Comanche Trail to the top of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A 12.3 mile difficult loop, with lakes and rugged cliff hugging trail along Phantom Terrace! The next few years even Frodo (our first black lab) did this hike with us! We came close to buying property in this area when we were younger, for we fell in love with this area after camping and hiking many of these peaks for years.*** Hello New Mexico at 11:15am. 🌋 So when one passes a sign saying National Monument ahead, wouldn’t you stop too even if it says Volcano?!! 😂😱🌋🤦🏻♀️ I did text our sons as we were pulling in to let them know it was an Extinct Volcano since 2 erupted 4 days after we visited them! (Kilauea in Hawaii & White Island in New Zealand)! 😳They said RUN! 🤣 🌋🌋🌋Capulin Volcano National Monument is in Northeastern New Mexico. It protects the extinct cinder cone volcano and the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field. The Capulin Volcano erupted 60,000 years ago and the falling debris accumulated around the vent, forming a cinder cone volcano. Within 10 miles are the 3 largest lava-capped mesas in the northwest! Who knew! 😱🤣 So we stopped of at the visitors center, got our map, dropped the trailer and headed up the paved road that spirals gradually around the volcano to the rim of the extinct volcano. Hiking trails circle the rim as well as lead down into the mouth of the volcano. The monument was designated on August 9, 1916. 🌋 🌳 The name capulin comes from a type of choke cherry, that is native to southern North America.It rises steeply from the surrounding grassland plains to an elevation of 8,182 feet above sea level. The irregular rim of the crater is about a mile in circumference and the crater about 400 feet deep.🌋 Capulin Volcano is one of the outstanding landmarks located in the northeast corner of New Mexico, where the rolling grasslands meet the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. At the top unobstructed, panoramic views of the volcanic field, distant snow-capped mountains, and portions of five states (New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Colorado). The view was amazing from the top and lots of volcanoes all around. 🤫 After we got Ruby back on the road we saw pronghorns, cows in the road, coyotes that ran right in front of the truck & lots of mule deer. 🦌 As we crossed into Oklahoma…… as far as you could see….hay & wheat fields! Bumpy ass roads for hours. Has to be the worse roads ever! Going across the panhandle for a few hours, Tim said “ man I thought we were in the middle of nowhere…. 5 hours later I found out I was wrong! Nowhere is much larger than I thought. We maybe in the middle now”! ****438 miles today! 7:15 pm we arrived for tonight’s adventure in Oklahoma! 👍 So surprised with our overnight reservation here at COE Park! Fort Supply Lake is 1 mile south of Ft Supply. Managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lake surface covers 1,800 acres. (Average is 8ft deep) There are about 6,000 acres of public hunting land managed by the Corps of Engineers and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation adjacent to the lake.(bobwhite quail & deer are popular but there’s turkey, pheasant, squirrel and rabbit in area). The lake was created in 1942 by damming Wolf Creek, although the work actually began in 1938. The primary purposes of the lake are for flood control and conservational storage. Its normal elevation is 2,400 feet. The lake has 26 miles of shoreline. Here at the campground, there’s also a boat ramp and a sandy beach! The campground is full on this Thursday night but it’s also Memorial Day weekend! For 1 night it’s perfect especially being only 6 feet from the waters edge! We didn’t even unhook the truck. We got out our chairs, made a campfire and had a late happy hour enjoying our water front view till about 9:30pm. 🍷🔥🍷 Tomorrow’s adventures find us traveling to Arkansas!
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