August 7, 2021 Lunch - Colfax Ale House. Dinner - Cheese and Fruit at Capulin Volcano

 August 7, 2021 Lunch - Colfax Ale House. Dinner - Cheese and Fruit at Capulin Volcano

Today we loaded the van with a bit of food and a change of clothes and drove north to Capulin Volcano National Monument for it Dark Sky Viewing session.

We stopped at Santa Fe Place Mall to visit the Travelers’ Market.  I saw some nice Venetian millefiore beads but they were $200 per strand, so I passed.

We then drove on to Raton where we found Colfax Ale House on the Main Street.  It made lots of beer, nut after trying a stout and a Porter I ordered the same Suzette ordered,a Golden Ale, light without any bitterness.

Suzette ordered Eloyte Bites, sort of a soft undercooked hush puppies with whole kernels of corn floating in a creamy dough that was then deep fried. The bites were served with a small Amerindian of sour cream topped with red chili.  Suzette Mixed the red chili into the sour- cream to make a spicy dipping sauce. We also split a brisket sandwich on a ciabatta roll with a bag of U.S. food’s Metro Deli potato chips with sea salt.

We enjoyed the corn bites, the sandwich, the chips, and the beer.

Then we drove to a gas station and gassed up and found out that Raton Pass was closed due to a three truck wreck in a construction zone.  We were lucky to be going East and not north.  

It reminded me of our trip to Europe when I had planned driving through the Sipulen Tunnel through the Alps from France to Piedmont in Italy but it was blocked being a truck fire.  As it turned out we took a much more interesting route over the top through Beaufort and a narrow gorge into Turin, the route Hannibal traveled when he attacked The Roman Empire.

When we arrived at Capulin Vocano we checked in and received a time to drive to the top of the cinder dome, I was amazed there was a road and even more surprised that it had been built in the 1920’s with mule drawn plows.  The view from the parking lot at the top was dramatic.  Unfortunately, haze from wildfires blocked much of the view, but here are some photos.

We drove back down the crater at 5:15 and organized a simple dinner of brie cheese, Swedish crisp bread, and fruit, a plum, a peach sliced, and 1/2 apple.  We drank one of the new wines we bought in July at Total wine, a 2019 Pigmentum, a blend of ignite Blanc and Colomard grapes from Cotes de Casgogne ($10.99 reduced to $8.79 on sale).  It had a very zesty acidity and the cool bard gave it a fullness of flavor. Quite a good bottle for the money.

After dinner we walked to the lecture area where a large group of people had gathered for the dark sky viewing.  There were three Rangers and nine telescopes.  There was a lecture in which small telescopes were given for correct answers to astronomical questions and I learned how little I know about the universe.

Then at 8:30 as the sky darkened we started walking from telescope to telescope looking at heavily bodies, Saturn, Venus, and several stars that had dissipated into circular clouds of gas.

Then we returned to our van and set up zsuzette’s new telescope but we were unable to focus it. So we walked back to the viewing area and watched several galaxies and then around 11:00 went to bed.

The mattress was a bit hard but, we slept through the night.

Bon Appetit