Capulin Volcano National Monument

This is a continuation of our 2017 road trip that I took with my youngest in June and July of that year. The day we drove through 5 states in one day, we stopped at Capulin Volcano National Monument in the late afternoon for a quick day trip of this out of the way national monument. It's a small park, only open during daylight hours, so it's perfect for a quick side trip. 

Usually, when we enter a national park or monument, we usually hit the visitors center first and this part was no exception, but there were a couple of extenuating circumstances to this visit. There was an actual physical geocache located inside the visitors center. Usually, geocaches are not allowed within national park boundaries, because the park service views geocaches as litter, for obvious reasons. However, this one was being maintained by one of the rangers there and so this was one of those special circumstances. I'd found a geocache hidden in the visitors center of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, but this one was a little bit easier to find, because all we had to do was ask the person behind the desk for the geocache and they pulled it out from behind the counter. Cool deal all the way around. After signing the logsheet and dropping a travel bug off in the container, we then headed back to the car and the road which would take us to the rim parking lot.

This particular monument is only open during daylight hours, there is no camping inside the park, so it would only take a couple of hours to tour the entire park. We spent about an hour and a half there, either in the visitors center, or walking the rim trail around the volcano. We opted not to make any hikes after the rim trail mainly because we had had a long day already and still had another hour or so to drive to get to our motel room further down the road.

The rim trail is self guiding with several interpretive signs around the rim giving you insight into why this volcano is here and what happened when it erupted many thousands of years ago. Because it stands out from the surrounding landscape, it offered views of New Mexico in all directions. I'm sure that if we'd been paying attention to details on a couple of the signs, we might have been able to see into Utah to the north, but I don't recall any distinguishing features that stood out.

There were two interesting things that did stand out on that particular walk. The first was the abundance of ladybugs that were in the early stages of getting out of hibernation and into mating mode. They were everywhere and I got a couple of shots of them, but nothing to write home about. Those of you who are still reading at this point are probably wondering, why I chose to put a picture of a damaged bench here instead of a photo of the ladybugs.

Well, this damaged bench was interesting, mainly because the damage was caused by a lightning strike. That, in my estimation, made it the coolest thing we saw up there on the rim that day. The bench actually had its own interpretive sign, so we weren't just guessing about it and we didn't really wonder whether we were in danger of a possible strike since the clouds off in the distance weren't the thunderhead type of clouds.

While up on the rim, we also completed what needed to be done for a virtual cache that was in the park and we would have probably also completed the steps for an earthcache that was there as well, but hadn't read the cache page ahead of time. It was only after we were back down off of the volcano that we realized that the information that we needed was back up on the rim and there wasn't enough time left to get back up there before the park closed, and so we called it a day.

All in all, it was an enjoyable couple of hours we spent in the park, once again marveling at the power of nature. If you're ever in the northeast corner of New Mexico, you might want to consider checking out this little park. It was a mid summer day and we practically had the park all to ourselves. 

700 and Scenic Route & becoming a Trail Angel

Two weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to go on my first camping trip in almost 2 years. Yeah, COVID will do things like that, but I digress. Most of you who are probably reading this, have already seen my video I put together about the hike we did on that Saturday up to Kearsarge Pass. If you haven't, I would suggest clicking on that link and watching it. As we were making our way up to Kearsarge Pass, we kept bumping into Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) hikers coming down the trail heading either to Independence or Bishop for a resupply of food. I talked with several of them and made up my mind if I could help a hiker or two get down the hill the next day, I'd do it. 

The next morning, Sunday, as I packed up camp and loaded up the Jeep for the ride back home, I did a good job of Tetrising my stuff so there'd be enough room for two other backpacks and two hikers I could bring down the hill. And as luck would have it, as I was entering the hiker part of the parking lot, there stood 700 with his thumb out and I asked him how many in his group. He said one other, Scenic Route and I said "Hop in." We drove down to where Scenic Route was and the look on her face as she put her thumb out, then realized that 700 was already in the car was priceless. We loaded up her gear into the Jeep and down the hill we went.

I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation as we made our way down the hill into Independence. 700 told me that he got his trail name because that's the amount of water he carries maximum. I guess in the Sierra, that's probably OK since there's lots of water around, but hiking with only 700 milliliters of water in the desert just seemed like downright scary to me. Scenic Route got her trail name because she ended up taking several hikers down the wrong trail at some point, thus she took them on the scenic route.

I dropped them off at the corner of the road as it joined up with HWY 395, we fist bumped and I asked if I could get a photo of the two of them. Now, I wish I could have gotten a couple more shots of them, but this one will do. Scenic Route took a photo of me with 700 for her albums. I got 700's Instagram account and am now following him there, so I can see how the rest of their trip is going. We then said out goodbyes and I watched them as they headed north to get a burger at a local restaurant.

And that's how I became a trail angel.

Spring has Sprung

It's the first week of the month and that means that it's time for P.J.'s monthly photo blog, this time with the theme Spring has Sprung. With all of the hiking I've been doing recently, it wasn't much of a stretch to come up with 5 photos that fit the theme for this month, so here we go.

1. Ladybug on a leaf

Last year at this time, I was taking photos of insects left and right. Butterflies and ladybugs were the main subjects last year. This year, I've been concentrating on the reptilian end of the animal kingdom (more on that later), but that hasn't stopped me from occasionally sneaking a shot of some insect that I end up crossing paths with. Insects are out and about finding mates, laying eggs and generally doing those life things that perpetuate their species, so this is a general photo indicating that spring definitely has sprung. I really liked the contrast of this one with all of the green and that single splash of red color in the middle.

2. Making more sunflowers

This particular trail leads up to Johnson's Pasture from Pomelo Ave. in Claremont. It's kind of tricky to find the actual access to this particular trail on the low side because there's a lot of no trespassing signs all around, but if people pay close attention, they'll notice that the no trespassing signs pertain to the horse ranch to the west. Even so, the trail itself it still kind of hidden and you kind of have to have inside knowledge about it.

In reality, I don't mind since that usually means there's less people on this particular trail, thus more wildlife to see, etc. I've encountered all kinds of birds, snakes and insects up there and there's a nice "grove" of wild sunflowers up there lining the trail. I can usually guarantee there are several honeybees pollinating the flowers and can usually get one or two decent shots of them creating more sunflowers for next year. This year's crop are starting to die out, but as you can see by the blur in the background of this shot, there's plenty of them up there for all to enjoy as long as everyone who goes through there practices the "Leave no Trace" hiking philosophy. Leave only footprints, take only pictures. I think we really need to keep that in mind as the population of bees dwindles over time due to insecticides doing what they do best to insect populations. It's not just sunflowers that we'll need in the future, but a lot of other plants depend upon bees.

3. Geocaching

I know, I know. I write about geocaching a lot. But it's something I enjoy and when an old teaching friend of mine said he was having problems with a particular cache, I jumped at the opportunity to go out and cache with him. I'd already found this cache, but it's always fun seeing people's eyes light up when they find a really well hidden cache, as this one was.

He, as most people do when they see me nowadays, commented on the length of my hair. In the past, my hair would get slightly longer in the springtime and usually after school got out, I'd go and get my summer cut. It was not really much of a difference back then, but you can tell it's still spring because I haven't gotten my hair cut yet. The key word there is yet. It's really starting to drive me crazy, but there are still a couple of people who haven't seen it in person yet, so I'm holding off until I see them and then I'm getting it cut. I'm fully vaccinated now and it's really time for the locks to go. Then we will know that summer has sprung, but in the meantime, my hair is still shaggy.

4. The snake whisperer

But Paul, that isn't a snake. Yeah, I know, but I don't have any still photos of snakes this month, just several videos, but lizards and snakes are in the same family and with the warmer weather, they are starting to be out in abundance, which means we all have to be careful while hiking or geocaching.

I've posted so many videos of snakes on Instagram and Facebook this season that several people have even considered not following me anymore, while other people have started calling me the Snake Whisperer and still others have suggested that I'm becoming one with the snakes. I'm not sure about any of those, but I might grab the handle of snake or reptile whisperer for a couple of reasons.

Once after a hike, I walked into the parking lot and there was a large lizard, similar to this one, sunning itself on a rock. I ended up sitting down on the rock right next to it, no more than 5 feet away or so. It didn't even flinch, like it knew that I was not going to harm it and I only wanted to get a close up shot for posterity. So it posed for me and then just sat there after the photo shoot was done.

The second instance happened earlier this week when I was taking the last shot in this series. I happened to look down the trail and there was another hiker just standing in the trail with camera out and I could see down on the ground in front of her, a two foot snake, although I wasn't sure what kind it was because I was too far away. So I hurried up to where she was, but the snake had already slithered away into the bushes. The other hiker confirmed that it was a Western Diamondback rattlesnake, which I assumed it was as I walked toward it because it had its tail up and I could see the rattles.

Anyway, I peered into the bushes on the side of the trail just in case I might be able to get a glimpse of the snake, but I couldn't see anything, so I turned to walk down the trail and continue my hike. Only after I walked away from the snake, did it rattle its rattle at me, as if to say, "Here I am." So I walked back over to where I'd heard the sound and spotted the snake curled up in the grasses by the side of the trail. It never rattled its tail again at me, even though I was closer to it when I finally saw it, as opposed to when I was walking away. Apparently, it knew that I meant it no harm and only wanted to see it. So yeah, I guess I'm the snake whisperer.

5. California Gold

Even though our last governor declared our drought over, we really haven't been out of a drought in California in possibly 20 years. We'll get one or two good rainy years, but then the next six or seven years are below normal. This year is no exception to that with the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada at 25% of normal. That's not a good thing as it means a dry summer and fall and more wildfires throughout that same time period. We've already had a couple of local wildfires in Southern California already in the spring, usually a time of greenness, but this season, we're already into our California Gold season where the grasses start to die off and we get this beautiful contrast between the dark green of the oaks and the brown of the hillside. All this really means is that spring, even though it's sprung, is quite short this year and we're quickly approaching summer time.

And there you have it, my interpretation of the theme for this month, Spring has Sprung. Comments, as always are greatly appreciated. Please stop by P.J.'s page and see how others interpreted the same theme.