First Time Ever Laying Eyes on the Rocky Mountains.

Wow, has it been two and a half years since I posted last? Man, where does time go. I thought being I had this blog, I would try to enter some posts.

I would like to recall the very first time I ever laid eyes on the Rocky Mountains.

Way back in 1979, after our first vacation the year before to the Ozark Mountains in Sept of 1978 and deciding that if the Ozarks were cool, we had to go see the Rockies, we were on our way from Hennessey, OK to Colorado Springs, CO. We drove through the panhandle of Oklahoma, No Man's Land. If you have never been through the panhandle, it consist of long rolling hills and stretches of flat plains. One thing some people told me to look for are places that you can see so far that the telephone poles looks like a picket fence. That was kind of neat.
When we got to New Mexico, around Clayton, NM, the landscape change and I was in awe already. These little hills all over the place. I had never seen anything like that. As we drove futher northwest on Hwy 64, the Sierra Grande came into view. I thought the Sierra Grande was the biggest mountain in the world. I didn't know it at the time, but read somewhere that the Sierra Grande was the largest single standing mountain in the lower forty-eight. It is not part of a range, it just sits by itself.
The highway turns to the right to go around the mountain kind of a long left turn for several miles. Halfway around the mountain the Capulin Volcano came into view.
 
Now it is exactly what I also thought a volcano should look like. Cylinder shape with a crater at the top. You can drive to the top, for a fee, but this particular year we didn't.

Now, here I was, just totally in awe at what I was seeing. I had the Sierra Grande on my left and the Capulin Volcano on my right. I just kept looking back and forth, from one side to the other just scoping both of them out. Thinking it could not get any better than this.

As we got to the other side of the Sierra Grande with it behind me, I was still looking at both of them through my rear view and side mirrors on our pickup. I didn't realize it until years later that if I had been looking straight ahead I would have gotten a shot of the Rocky Mountains before I acually did, but anyway as I was driving toward Raton, NM, I drove up a little hill, with the Sierra Grande still behind me, and top the hill and whoa, in front of me, my very first view of the Rocky Mountains came into sight!!

Now, I wish I could put into words as to exactly how I felt when I seen them for the first time. For a flatlander, it was wonderful, but terrorizing. Beautiful but intimating. I just not could believe it. The day was perfect. There was no haze, no dirt in the air, but a crisp crear day and the view I had of the Rocky Mountains was about as perfect as could be. My wife and two kids were asleep. As we descended down from the small hill, the mountains left my view but could tell when I climbed the next hill, we would be in view again. I poked my wife in the arm and pointed at the Rocky Mountains.  I will never forget the very first time I ever laid eyes on the Rocky Mountains.