On to New Mexico

We left Van Horn around 8:15 and were back on I-10 heading west to New Mexico.  It was a cool morning but a clear one -- perfect for driving.

As we approached El Paso, the horizon was smoggy, foggy or dusty.  We were not sure which it was.

El Paso is right on the Texas/Mexican border.  The mountains behind the tall buildings are Mexico.   Fortunately, the traffic was not too bad going through El Paso.

After we entered New Mexico,

we stopped at a welcome center to get information on things to do around Deming, NM.  There were these beautiful flowering plants at the welcome center...

...right in front of this warning sign.  Needless to say, we stayed on the sidewalk!

As we headed further west, we passed a huge stockyard that we had remembered passing on our trip in 2013.  The place has thousands of cattle.  Next, Ken got on the walkie-talkie and pointed out that we passed through a grove of peeking trees.  What are peeking trees?

Then, we saw a sign for New Mexico Pecan Company and realized he was saying pecan trees.  We have a friendly debate on the correct pronunciation of "pecan."  We have gotten him to drop his g's when he is sayin' anythin' that ends in "-ing."  :)

We arrived at Dreamcatchers Escapees RV Park around 11:15 MST (we had crossed into the mountain time zone right after we left Van Horn).  After getting set up and eating some lunch, we went to Wal-mart separately to get some groceries and then took a little nap after that.

Although the park is nothing special (no amenities like a pool), it does have full hookups and a beautiful view.

And we have great neighbors wherever we go!  :)

Guadalupe Mountains NP

When we left Carlsbad Caverns yesterday, we stopped by the visitor center to at Guadalupe Mountains National Park to get suggestions from the ranger for day hikes.  We also watch the information movie about Guadalupe Mountains while we were at the visitor center yesterday.

We left the campground around 8:30 and traveled up Hwy 54 north of Van Horn which was the same way we traveled to Carlsbad Caverns yesterday.  We stopped at the visitor center to register for the day hike.  Once again, the Hosler's National Parks Pass allowed us to hike for free.  Otherwise, it would have been $5 per person.  Thank you, Ken & Bonnie!

Guadalupe Mountains became a national park in 1972 and contains over 86,000 acres.  The tallest peak in Texas, Guadalupe Peak (8,751 ft), lies within the park and rises majestically above the surrounding mountains and desert.  You can hike to the top of Guadalupe Peak but since it is a 8.4 mile hike and is rated strenuous, we decided to stick with the ranger's recommendation of the 4.8 McKittrick Canyon to Pratt Cabin hike.

We drove to the parking lot for McKittrick Canyon and saw some mule deer out in the desert.

After parking the car, we put on our hiking boots and gear, and headed into the canyon.

The beginning of the hike had a slight climb up and then back down...

...where it followed and occasionally crossed a dry creek bed.

It was a perfect morning for hiking.  The temperatures were in the low 60's, just a little wind, and a clear blue sky.

What is unique to the Guadalupe Mountains are the trees that are found growing here.  Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and aspen can be found growing in the highlands of the mountains.  Maple, oak and  trees like this Texas Madrone tree, unique because of its dark red bark, are fed by a spring in McKittrick Canyon.

Madrone tree

These trees live among desert plants like prickly peark cactus, agave and sotol.

Sotol plants

Agave plant

Only blooms once in its life.

We also passed by several of these fir trees...

...whose bark have kind of a checked pattern.

The cacti were not in bloom here, but there was also a sprinkle of two different kinds of yellow flowers along the way.  

With all the variations of trees, plants and animals, it is easy to understand why some people call McKittrick Canyon "the most beautiful spot in Texas."

We continued hiking through the canyon, crossing the dry creek bed several more times.

At one point, we actually crossed the canyon's spring fed stream that provides the water for the unusual mixture of plant life.

We continued our hike enjoying the views of McKittrick Canyon all along the way.

We came to where a stone entrance gate and knew we must be close to Pratt's Cabin.

Wallace Pratt was a petroleum geologist who after visiting the Guadalupe Mountains in 1921, bought a tract of land that included a large portion of McKittrick Canyon.  The house was built in 1932 and was built of local limestone and heart pine. The Pratt family spent their summers in the cabin and briefly lived at the cabin during Wallace Pratt's early retirement.  When the family moved to Tucson, Arizona, they donated the cabin and more than 5,000 acres to the National Park.

There was a garage/barn behind the house.  

The roofs of both the house and the garage were a mosaic of flat limestone that you would expect to see more on a floor than a roof.  

We walked around the back of the house...

...and found the perfect place to rest our feet.

Bonnie and I sat on the front porch in a couple of adirondack chairs that must have had our names on them because we didn't give them up the whole time we sat there.  :)

We enjoyed talking with another couple from California we had met along the trail who had stopped their to rest for a few minutes too.

I think I could have taken a little snooze if we had sat there much longer.  The weather was perfect and the views were AWESOME!  It's easy to see why Mr. Pratt loved this McKittrick Canyon so much.

We had originally thought we might hike another mile further to the Grotto and Hunter Line Cabin but the gravel that was on most of this travel made my toes hurt, Ken's heel hurt, and Bonnie's back hurt.  Plus, we did not want to get back too late to the campground.  So we decided to head on back.

Along the way back, we met another full-timing couple from Helena, Montana.  We stopped and talked with them for several minutes about each other's travels.  After we got back to the car, we decided to have our picnic lunch under the shelter at the visitor center so we could enjoy the views for just a little bit longer.

We said our good-byes to El Capitan and the Guadalupe Moutains and headed back to Van Horn.

We each snoozed some on the drive back to Van Horn except Ken of course (I hope)!  We stopped to try to get pictures of Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon) space tourism facility.  

Bezos has acquired 290,000 acres north of Van Horn in hopes to build a space tourism business, Blue Origin.  We tried to get a picture of some of the facilities but with not much success.

Later that evening, we went to dinner at the Cattle Company whose hamburgers had been recommended to us by another RVer.  The hamburgers were very good but the view of an empty hotel pool was not so good.

We got together after dinner for our nightly game of cards with the guys winning SkipBo and the girls winning Pinochle.  

Texas has been fun, beautiful and the people so friendly!  Tomorrow, we begin our adventures in another state:  New Mexico!

Carlsbad Caverns

We left the campground by 8:00 am and drove north on Hwy 54 out of Van Horn towards our destination for the day:  Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

The morning was a cool 48 degrees but beautiful!

The entire 100 mile drive between Van Horn and Carlsbad Caverns is very desolate but beautiful.  We passed one rest area and no gas stations.

We crossed into the Mountain Time Zone which was going to put us getting to the park an hour earlier but that was ok because we were hoping to get tickets to go on the first ranger guided tour of the day of the Kings Palace.

We climbed up the 7% grade on Hwy 62 from which we could see the majestic El Capitan, the tallest peak in Texas, located within the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  We will be coming back to Guadalupe Mountains NP tomorrow to do a little hiking.

We arrived at Carlsbad Caverns around 9 am Mountain Time and drove up the windy road to the top of the hill where you go into the caverns.

Carlsbad Canyon became a national park in 1930 and has over 400,000 visitors a year from all over the U.S. and the world.

After purchasing our tickets for the 10:30 Kings Palace Tour, we walked around the gift shop and bookstore for a little while before riding down an escalator 748 feet to where the tours of the caverns begin.  In other words, we were going down as far on this elevator to Carlsbad Caverns as we had gone up to the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio!

We walked a little ways toward the Big Room because we had a little time before the Kings Palace Tour began.

We had only seen a little of the caverns so far and we already knew this was going to be the biggest cave in which we had ever been -- including Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.  Mammoth Cave has a lot more miles in tunnels but Carlsbad has a lot bigger rooms.

After the ranger gave her brief description of the tour and precautions, we began going through part of the Big Room and then began a descent down to where the Kings Palace was located.  The trails that we walked on were all aggregate-paved and had railings anytime there was much of a descent.

My pictures do not come anywhere close to showing the magnitude and beauty of the caverns.  I did not use a flash hoping the natural beauty of the caverns would come through better than with a flash.  Also, since I was not using a flash, the camera would make some the pictures look kind of green and the caverns were not green at all.  In fact, they had very little color at all.  We passed by this big set of stalactites that had broken off from the ceiling. That's why they are leaning rather than hanging straight down from the ceiling.

We enter the Kings Palace which was magnificent!

And this is the Kings Court inside the Kings Palace...

both of which were named by Jim White who discovered Carlsbad Caverns when he was a young boy around 16 years old working on a nearby cattle ranch.  One day when he was looking for stray cattle, he saw what he thought was smoke but when he worked his way closer to it, Jim discovered it was millions of bats flying into and out of what is the natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns.  He began exploring the caverns and over the rest of his life he explored and promoted the caverns.  He named many of the rooms and formations, like the Kings Palace, that we visited today.  

There were thousands of stalactites hanging down from the ceiling, stalacmites rising up from the floor, columns or pillars of connected stalactites and stalacmites, and drapers which were big formations coming down from the ceiling.

A tunnel was made in a portion of the cave 82 years ago to provide a better path to the Kings Palace.  A stream of water was struck when the tunnel was made and still drips today.

The water drips are creating more stalactites that are now about 1/4 to 1/2 inch long and 82 years old which gives some perspective on how long it takes these huge stalactites to form.

We continued through the caverns marveling at all the formations everywhere.

This was an unusual swirl formation on the ceiling.

Jim White would use burn marks from his lantern to mark his way through the caverns like these:

Some of the passageways were narrow and you had to watch your head in places also.

We entered the Queens Chamber room...

...where after we all had sat down, the park ranger turned out the lights so we could experience total darkness (I didn't take a picture of that).  It's really weird not being able to see anything.  And when she lit a single small lighter, the entire room lit up.

We continued through the tour and saw what looked like silhouette of Olaf from the movie Frozen to me.

And then we went by the Bashful Elephant.

While a lot of the caverns is much drier than it used to be, there are still beautiful little pools of water in some places.

As we finished up the Kings Palace tour, we could see the old wooden stairs where tours descended into the caverns years ago.

After we finished the Kings Palace tour, we continued on another self-guided tour through the Big Room.  We went by the Boneyard,

the Rock of Ages,

...and through the many huge chambers of the Big Room...

The Big Room is HUGE.  The Big Room is 8.2 acres in size and is the largest single cave chamber in North America.  We could also see down to the Lower Cave where we could see the Lower Cave tour going on with everyone wearing their head lamps.

The those tiny little spots are people wearing head lamps.

We were all so impressed by Carlsbad Caverns.  The trails inside the cave are amazing and designed to see so much of the cave very well.  I still can't get over how big those rooms were!

It was almost 3 pm when we finished the Big Room tour.  We were all getting hungry so we decided to head back up the elevator and go back to the car to eat our lunches.  We wanted to eat at one of the picnic tables but the wind was terrible so we ate in the car.  Nice view!

On the way back to Van Horn, we stopped by the Visitor Center at Guadalupe Mountains NP to get recommendations on which hike or hikes tomorrow when we came back to Guadalupe Mountains.

After we got back home and ate dinner, we got back together at our place for a game of Spades and a game of Pinochle.  The guys won Spades and the girls won Pinochle.  Everyone finished the day a winner!