Driving up a volcano - in the dark!

This week Rob reminded me of an adventure of my youth. I guess It could be another story for my grandchildren, since no harm came to any of the participants.

In my teenage years my parents (Pops) got the travel bug and we toured the western US, dragging a home-made pop-up camping trailer. I've talked about the trailer before. I regret that I don't have a clear memory of everywhere we went, and when we went there, but I do remember that on this trip Richard and Margie Woods, Steve and Connie were traveling with us. We were homeward bound and somewhere south of Fort Collins when the generator went out on our car. Now at that time you could drive a car on the battery alone for a long time, as long as you didn't operate anything else electrical. That car didn't have A/C, there were no radio stations in that part of the world, and it was daylight, so we were good. I doubt that today's automobiles will continue to function for any period of time - if at all.

Our destination for camp that evening was Mt. Capulin, an extinct volcano that sticks up in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. You remember - as you are making that desolate dash across the corner of New Mexico, from Texline to Raton (or vice-versa) in just about the middle of that flat arid stretch  - about 2 miles north of the highway Mt Capulin just sticks up. There was supposed to be a campground there, and that was our goal.

We lost a lot of time along the way - trying to diagnose the problem and then find a replacement generator, so by the time we left Raton, it was getting dark. We came upon an old, slow-moving Ford pickup full of Hispanics going our direction, so Pops tucked in behind it and Richard (who had lights) trailed behind us, so we had a little convoy going. The guys in the back of the pickup were amused at our predicament, but recognized what was going on. This got us to the mid point and the turnoff to Mt Capulin and with the chances of encountering traffic on this road nil, we struck out for the campground.

I don't remember if it was because it was dark that we didn't see the campground at the base of the mountain, or that it wasn't much of a camp ground, or both, but we sailed right past it and followed the road round the mountain to the top, looking for a camp site. I remember Pops being cool with the situation. Not so much, my mother. When we got to the top, all we found was a gravel parking lot, and there was no way that my mother was going to drive down that mountain in the dark, so we popped the top on the camper (Richard & Margie had a pickup with a camper over the bed) and we spent the night in what in camping vernacular is called a "dry camp."

In the morning, we had a spectacular view of some really desolate countryside - and of the little campground at the base, so we rolled off the mountain and reestablished camp long enough for breakfast and then resumed the journey homeward.

Today Mt Capulin is a National Monument, and in addition to the campground, there is a lovely visitors center (you can see it in the foreground of the picture, Trust me, that wasn't there the night we drove up the mountain.) You can walk the rim and trek into the crater, and you might - as Barb and I did on one occasion  - see a bazillion ladybugs. But you can't camp the night up there.