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Index:
About the Trip (September 1996):
Sometimes patience pays off. I had planned to take a trip similar to this
particular excursion in March 1995 after a business trip to San Diego. In
fact, I even had the airline tickets to do so. Unfortunately, I busted up my
knee a couple of weeks beforehand and had to cancel it. Ever since then,
I've been looking for an opportunity to try again. As luck would have it,
my uncle's wedding finally provided the perfect excuse to go back to the
southwest and even set me up with a travelling partner - my cousin Perry.
Perry and I met up in Austin, Texas, where my cousin Peter and his wife
Cammie live. This was first time I had ever been to Austin, so I didn't
know what to expect. It turns out Austin is quite alright. It has an awesome
nightlife, including a great music scene. We went to see the band Storyville
at Antone's, one of Austin's more famous music clubs (the likes of Stevie
Ray Vaughn and the Fabulous Thunderbirds passed thru here early in their
careers as well as a lot of more established blues and rock bands). By the
way, Storyville was great and they now appear to be just hitting the national
scene - buy their disc! We also went to 6th Street - the heart of bar life
in Austin - which
is a wild place, especially on home UT football game weekends. I also
recommend Esther's Follies for some topical comedy - it's well worth the price
of admission.
After leaving Austin, Perry and I headed west into the desert. Our first stop
was
Big Bend N.P.
way down in the southwest corner of Texas where the Rio Grande makes a wide looping
turn (hence the name). Big Bend covers a wide variety of terrain, from
the canyons, reed plants and parched heat of the river, to the scrub brush
and cacti of the more elevated desert flats, to the rugged spires of the Chisos
Mountains in the park's interior. We spent our first morning hiking around the
Chisos on the Window Trail which goes from the basin area to the top of the
pouroff for a small stream. From the pouroff, there's a nice view of a portion
of the western part of the park. However, the best part of the trail is the
plantlife and critters. I was really surprised to see the number and
variety of butterflies and flowers in the high desert. I was also taken aback
by seeing my first tarantula in the wild along with stuff I more expected to
see - a couple of snakes, a few lizards, and tons of grasshoppers.
We spent the afternoon driving to the eastern access to the Rio Grande and
hiking the mile or so through reeds to the canyon there. The canyon was
quite nice, but what was more interesting was that we found 4 or 5 unattended
horses near the canyon mouth. They weren't tied up, nor did they have saddles
or other riding gear on them. In fact two of them were young, which makes
it less likely that they were being ridden. To this day, we still haven't
figured out what they were doing there, who they belonged to or if they
were wild (which seems unlikely). The final part of day 1 was watching the
sunset in the Chisos Basin.
Day 2 of Big Bend involved lots of driving. We went to Dagger Flats - a flat
part of the desert plain with lots of cacti, creosote, etc. Then we slowly
made our way across to the western side of the park, where we saw Mule Ears
peaks, Cerro Castellan and a really wild thunderstorm. We finally made it back to
the Rio Grande at Santa Elena Canyon with the intention of hiking the trail
into the canyon. Unfortunately, a walkway looked to be washed out and about
10 feet of sucking mud stopped us from getting to the other side. After
several attempts to find another way and build another make-shift bridge over
the mud, we were thwarted and settled for some pictures of the canyon entrance.
Now I have a reason to go back.
Our next stop was
Guadalupe Mountains N.P.
The Guadalupe Mountains are the remains of a coral reef that formed
around the perimeter of a Permian era shallow inland sea that spread over
western Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The sea is long since gone and the
reef was buried for ages, but the land has since been pushed up by other
geologic events. Parts of the reef are now exposed as softer ground has eroded
around it. The Guadalupes rise over 3000 feet above the desert floor, making
a spectacular sight. El Capitan is the leading southern edge and rises almost
straight out of the desert below, while Guadalupe Mountain stands the tallest
at over 8700 ft. above sea level (highest spot in Texas).
Our adventures kept us in the lower elevations around the central mountains of
the park. We took a trail that wandered by two natural springs and the oases
they create in the desert flora. We also hiked into McKittrick Canyon. Both
hikes were well worth it. McKittrick is supposed to be absolutely amazing
when the leaves change colors due to the variety of trees inhabiting the
canyon - especially the maples which turn bright reddish-orange.
Unfortunately, we missed the foliage season by a couple of weeks. If you go
to Guadalupe Mountains N.P., I would suggest going in mid-October and hiking
into McKittrick Canyon (a good hike is 4 1/2 miles roundtrip with little
elevation change).
Day 4 was a bit of a change as we spent most of our time below ground in
Carlsbad Caverns N.P.
I still can't believe that people actually find it fun to crawl around
in caves hoping that their lanterns don't go out. Luckily,
someone explored Carlsbad years ago and now it has paved walkways to hike on
and elevators to get in and out without all that crawling around stuff.
Anyway, the caverns are incredible. Someone once described them as being the
Grand Canyon upside down - which is a reasonable attempt at describing the
indescribable. It's peaceful (when you can get away from the crowds), yet it
is very eerie at times; it's beautiful, but it is also somewhat intimidating;
it's huge, but also seems confining (I guess millions of tons of rock will do
that to a person...). All this rolled into one still doesn't
quite describe it. Anyway, go for yourself and you'll see.
We took the hard way down - hiking a mile (about 800 ft. vertical) through
the natural entrance. This was well worth it because it was the only time
you can get away from the crowds. An added benefit is that you can make all
the gross noises you want and listen to the echoes off the sometimes
200+ feet high ceilings while no one is around - great fun for the whole
family.
Once at the bottom, the Great Room is fantastic - this is what everyone
comes to see. It's also pretty cool that there is a gift shop and restrooms
down there - 800 feet under ground! If you can get on a ranger-led tour,
do it. We took one to the area that is now off-limits to the general
public due to vandalism. It was an interesting tour and the rooms had some
amazing formations - especially the King's Throneroom. And, of course,
they do the standard tourist thing - turn off the lights (if you've never
done this, it is a very odd feeling).
After Carlsbad we continued our trek westward across New Mexico stopping next
in the Alamogordo area. Our primary objective was
White Sands National Monument
but we managed to sneak in
Three Rivers Petroglyphs National Monument
and Aguire Springs National Recreation Area just for grins.
White Sands is a large dune field made completely out of gypsum sand, so it
is brilliant white instead of the tan or black of most dunes. For geology
buffs the process that forms the dunes goes something like this. First, the
dunes are located in the desert valley between two mountain ridges - the
Sacramento and San Andreas (no this isn't California). Before the
mountains were pushed up and the valley collapsed, the entire
area had a layer of gypsum buried below the surface (from an ancient alkaline
sea or lake I think). Anyway, after the valley collapsed, the sides of the
ridges along the fracture line now have layers of gypsum exposed to the
elements. Rain dissolves the gypsum, carrying it into the valley. However,
because the valley has no drainage outlets, the gypsum-laden water collects
in a Lake XXX and during dry times is deposited on the valley floor as the
lake dries up. Wind takes care of the rest, moving the sand into dunes which
can sometimes move more than 30 feet per year.
OK, enough geology. White Sands is worth a trip and I had a lot of fun
jumping off the tops of dunes and generally looking silly. When I was a kid
going to the Jersey shore walking on the dunes was strictly taboo, because
the dunes protect the beaches. So I enjoyed it doubly much because
I had the feeling that I was getting away with something.
Three Rivers Petroglyphs was a spontaneous little side trip that was more
interesting than I expected. Rock drawings were thicker than the bugs on
our windshield after 2000 miles crossing the desert. We employed a
time-honored strategy for finding the best ones - we let kids do it (a
large group of kids on a field trip arrived just after we did). We just
listened for the loudest shouts, waited til they cleared out of the area
and then swooped in. They also made sure that any snakes or scorpians were
long gone by the time we got there - bonus!.
Aguire Springs was an after thought and is basically just a camping and picnic
area. But, we hit it near sunset, so there were a few nice views and it was
worth the hour or so we invested in driving around there.
On our final day on the road was probably the busiest of all. First, we
decided to take a detour to Tombstone, Arizona. Boy is this a big time
tourist trap. We spent our $4 for the grand package. What you get is:
After escaping Tombstone as quickly as possible, we headed to the Pima
Airforce Museum in Tuscon. It was really cool. It has tons of stuff -
bombers, fighters, cargo planes; WW 2, Korea, Vietnam, current - you name it.
The highlight by far is the SR-71, which is a tech-head's dream. Almost
everything on the plane had to be invented from scratch because it runs
so hot from the speeds it achieves that conventional technology wouldn't
cut it. It's also really cool because there really isn't much chance of
it being shot down because at mach 3.2+ it flies faster than everything
else - including bullets, rockets and missiles.
And finally... we drove through the western section of
Saguaro National Park.
Lots of big saguaro cacti, some nice hills, some more tarantulas -
definitely worth the quick drive through.
The rest of the trip involved seeing family and going to my uncle's wedding -
oh yeah, remember that?? Anyway, an excellent time was had by all.
About the Trip
Big Bend National Park
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Enchanted Rock State Park (Texas)
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Saguaro National Park (West)
Three Rivers Petroglyphs National Monument
White Sands National Monument
Big Bend National Park
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Enchanted Rock State Park (Texas)
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Saguaro National Park (West)
Three Rivers Petroglyphs National Monument
White Sands National Monument
To Big Bend National Park Index
To Carlsbad Caverns National Park Index
To Guadalupe Mountains National Park Index
To Saguaro National Park Index
To White Sands National Monument Index
To Travel Picture Index