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| Pancakes on the griddle |
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| A sci-fi moment |
As befits a democratic society, the scouts were asked what they wished to see this afternoon. Their choices included visiting museums and historical sites in Cimarron or hiking around an extinct volcano. Unsurprisingly, they unanimously chose the volcano, no matter how hard I tried to convince them of the value of historical tourism. The volcano we visited was the Capulin Volcano National Monument in northeastern New Mexico. The mountain is a cone volcano with a trail around the rim of the crater and another that descends into the crater itself. The mountain rises 1,300 feet above the plain and offers spectacular views of the surrounding area.
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| Andrew, Robert, and Joe balance on the rim of the crater |
Next, it was on to Cimarron, New Mexico, the home of Philmont Scout Ranch. Our campground for the evening is only five miles from base camp. After setting up our tents, we drove through the town (one has to be careful not to blink or you would miss seeing the town entirely) and past the main gate of Philmont. Our main purpose was to find a store in which we could buy food for dinner. However, in a weak moment, I allowed the boys to talk me into pizza on the patio at the St. James Hotel. The pizza was good but it may have blown our food budget. While at the hotel, we ran into another Philmont crew. They were members of Troop 15 out of Rome, Georgia.
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| Pizza on the patio |
Tomorrow morning, we check in at Philmont around 10:00 am. We have been told that due to the fire burning south of the ranch, all southern itineraries are being modified to avoid the fire. Since we are supposed to start in the north country and move to the south next week, it is unknown whether we will be able to complete our original itinerary. We will find out more tomorrow. Another concern of mine is that Cimarron does not seem to have any Verizon coverage. Others in the crew with T-Mobile and AT&T have good service but those of us with Verizon are out of luck. This could be a problem for my future blog posts. I am using the campground Wi-Fi for this post but there is no way to know if I will be able to make any posts from the trail without phone coverage. I should know more about that tomorrow as well. The boys are playing Frisbee with another crew from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Hopefully, they will settle down soon.
More photos from the day are available here.