I’ve planned out my current road trip in fairly meticulous detail. But one of the most exciting moments of travel, right up there with seeing something you’ve long-dreamed of seeing for the first time, is discovering a place you didn’t know exists.
Driving from the Texas Panhandle to Colorado, I clipped the northeastern tip of New Mexico. Before today, I had no clue this area was home to an 800 square mile lava flow and Capulin Volcano, one of the most perfectly formed cinder cone volcanoes in the world.
A short drive off Highway 87, the road spirals up the volcano to the rim of its crater, a thousand feet above the ground. 60,000 years ago, weakness in the earth’s crust buckled to the pressure of magma and spewed superheated liquified rock into the sky. The rock solidified as it fell and formed the cone shape still there to this day.
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