I visited New Mexico in August 2003. Our first stop was at Capulin Volcano National Monument, on August 10. This is an impressive extinct crater of a volcano. You can drive to the top, and hike a loop around the crater. The views from the top are very good, and you can see many more of this kind of craters in the surrounding landscape. Very pretty!
I didn't really enjoy my time there though, since shortly after parking our car on top of the volcano we discovered that our rental car had a flat tire!! Fortunately we met a park ranger who put the spare tire on for us, and gave us directions to his dad's garage, who fixed the tire for us. What a relief!
Here are some photos taken from the top and from the surroundings:

We left New Mexico the same day, but we returned a couple of days later and stayed in the state from 15-19 August. We were visiting Harald, he is a Dutch PhD student in Socorro. He took us on trips around Socorro: we chased for dust devils, did stargazing, and on the last night we went out to photography thunderstorms.
On the first photo you can see two cowboys - Oscar and Harald, the second one is a 45 minute start trail photo, and the last one is a lightning photo where the shutter was open for about 15 minutes, you can see star trails in that one as well! The last three photos are taken by Oscar: one in Haralds car, one during a hike and the last one in Haralds garden.

On August 19, I drove back all the way to Norman in Oklahoma, 1000 kilometers!! It was a pretty drive though, we drove through Texas.