By Shelby
Monday, we worked a half day in San Antonio from the Japanese Tea Garden. The tea garden was a free city park built in an abandoned quarry. It was very nice. There was a large stone pavilion and stairs that led down to the garden. The large koi pond had a bunch of fish in it and Japanese-style bridges crossing over it. There was even a waterfall.
After work, we drove out of San Antonio to the small city of Del Rio about 3 hours away. Del Rio is right on the border to Mexico. When we arrived, we went straight to a laundromat to do laundry. We were really running low on clothes. After finishing up with laundry, we drove to a nearby park to have tacos for dinner.
Tuesday, we worked at the local library. Del Rio seemed to be a pretty nice town/city. It was very clean and everyone said hi to us. There was a very high hispanic population and a lot of the signs and businesses around were in Spanish. During the day, the temperature was in the 70s, but at night it was down to the 40s. After work, we went grocery shopping for our next meal – Buffalo chicken mac and cheese.
Wednesday, we worked from the same library again. Unfortunately, they open at 10AM, so we had to work a couple hours from the car before we could go in. For lunch, we went to Sonic. Neither of us had tried it before, so it was interesting. We went to the drive-in area to order and they brought the food out to us when it was ready.
After work, we drove over to the border to check it out. There was a very long, tall metal fence. Spencer wanted to take a picture holding On the Border tortilla chips while standing on the border. It was actually pretty cool to see the border. I could see the Mexican flag not too far away.
We made dinner at the same park we had already been to earlier that week. It was quite the process. We had to cook the pasta, cook the chicken, chop up the cheddar cheese into tiny pieces, make the Buffalo sauce, and mix it all together until the cheese melted. It was a big pain to clean everything. The cheese was really messy. The mac and cheese turned out pretty good, but it was a lot of work. After dinner, we drove back to Planet Fitness for the night.
Thursday morning, we got up early. We had a lot of driving to do. We drove over four hours to Big Bend National Park, one of the most remote national parks in the country. Along the way, we stopped at a viewpoint of a bridge going over the Pecos River. Marathon was the closest town to the park. It was in the middle of the desert. It’s surprising that a town can even exist in such a harsh environment.
Our first stop in Big Bend National Park was a short walk into Tuff Canyon. We saw some interesting purple cacti. The environment was very unique and very dry. The mountains were brown and covered in small shrubs and cacti. The area was originally formed by volcanic activity.
We stopped for lunch at a mountain viewpoint before moving on to our next stop, the Santa Elena Canyon, which was dug out by the Rio Grande over many years. One side of the canyon was Mexico and the other was the US.
We walked a two mile hike into the canyon. The water in the river flooded the usual path, so we had to go around and climb up a steep hill. It was nice to be out hiking again on non-flat surfaces.
The canyon was amazing. The slow-moving Rio Grande didn’t look like it could have been powerful enough to carve out a canyon that deep, but it did. On the way out of the canyon, we saw a herd of goats on the Mexican side. There were some kids who had crossed the river to get a closer look. Just like that, they were in a different country.
Our next stop was a scenic overlook to eat dinner and watch the sunset. For dinner, we had leftover mac and cheese and sugar snap peas. The sunset was really nice. We were even able to catch the full moonrise opposite of the sunset.
We didn’t linger too long after sunset, since we still had over a half hour drive to our campsite in Chisos Basin. Chisos Basin was an area almost completely surrounded by mountains. There was a spring that supplied water to the area that emptied out through the Window, an opening between mountains. The drive to get there had a lot of switchbacks since we had to cross between mountains.
The stars were very bright, but unfortunately the full moon overpowered a lot of them. Big Bend is one of the darkest areas in the US and we had perfectly clear skies while we were there so it was kind of a bummer that there was a full moon. The campsites in Chisos Basin were very small. Everyone had to park their cars in the road since there was no room in the sites. We didn’t use our site at all since we got there after dark. We just used the parking spot in the road to park and sleep in the Prius.
Friday morning, we got up early again. Spencer wanted to catch the moonset and maybe the sunrise. I ate a bowl of cereal while Spencer went for a short walk. He got some great pictures of the moon. We weren’t able to see the sunrise since it was hidden behind a mountain.
After having breakfast and getting ready, we set off on a 10 mile hike to the highest peak in the park, Emory Peak. Its elevation at the top was 7825 feet. We could see the peak from the campground. The trail to the top started out in a forest, which surprisingly didn’t really open up until the very end. We saw lots of pancake-like cacti and aloe plants along the way. There were also many pretty blue birds.
Most of the trail had great views of Chisos Basin. When we got near the top, we passed over the lower part of the mountain. We were able to see the vast desert mountains in the distance. It was very impressive.
When we reached nearly the peak, there was a steep rock scramble we had to climb up. I almost made it to the top but I got too worried about climbing back down. I sat on a ledge and took in the view. Spencer made it to the top. He got some great panoramic views. He was able to find a slightly easier and less vertical way back down the rocks.
When we were satisfied with the pictures we had gotten, we continued back down the five miles back to the car. We were both very tired. Unfortunately, we had a four hour drive before we could rest for the night. We were also a little behind schedule, so we had to skip another area of the park that had hot springs and showers. That night, we stayed at a small rest area off the highway near Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We also crossed into the Mountain Time Zone, so we gained an hour.
The next morning, we woke up pretty early due to the time change. We were very confused and disoriented because our cell phones kept changing time because we were so close to the edge of the time zone. After getting ready at the rest area, our first stop of the day was a scenic viewpoint of El Capitan, a well known peak in the Guadalupe Mountains. We also had breakfast there before moving on to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park visitors center.
Despite our legs being very sore from the 10 mile hike the day before, we were able to complete a 4 mile hike to Devil’s Hall. It was a very interesting hike. We started out hiking through the desert brush, but then went down to the Wash, a dried out riverbed. We had to climb up and around massive boulders.
We came to what probably used to be a waterfall, with steep ledges that we had to climb up. That was pretty fun. At the top, there was a gross looking pond of water. We continued on our hike.
Devil’s Hall was a narrow canyon with very tall and steep rock walls. It was very cool to walk through. We made sure to take a lot of pictures before heading back down the trail. This was our last stop in Texas. We both really enjoyed all of our adventures in Texas including New Year’s in San Antonio, working in Del Rio, and hiking in the two National Parks. The east coast was nice but very flat and we are really glad to be back in the mountains now.
Our next stop was Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Fortunately, it was only a 45 minute drive from Guadalupe Mountains. The drive into the park was through yellow bush-dotted hills. The visitors center was on top of one of them. We could see way off in the distance from the top. A lot of the land apart from where we were was very flat.
We did a 2.5 mile self-guided tour through the cavern. We loved that we were able to go deep into the cave without being part of a ranger-led tour, like in Wind Cave and Mammoth Cave. We were able to take our time and take as many pictures as we wanted.
We entered the cave through the Natural Entrance, a large opening with many steep ramp switchbacks. It was amazing. I couldn’t imagine how they were able to build a path into it like that.
Carlsbad Cavern is exactly how I would imagine a cave, with tons of dripping stalactites and large rooms. It was very different from the caves we had already been in. Carlsbad Cavern was formed by sulfuric acid dissolving limestone, unlike Mammoth Cave, which was formed by underground rivers and rainwater dissolving the limestone.
Once we had reached the bottom of the Natural Entrance, we went into the Big Room, the largest open room in a cave in North America. We saw a ton more stalactites and stalagmites as we walked the paved loop path through it. I was surprised at how few people were down there. When we finished the trail, we took the elevator 750 feet up to the visitors center.
Our last stop of the day was Roswell, New Mexico, a city known for an alleged UFO crash in 1947. Along the way, we passed a massive oil refinery. The pink and orange sky behind it made it look scenic. We went right to Planet Fitness to shower. We felt really grubby after doing all of that hiking the past couple of days without showering. They closed at 7PM, which was pretty early. We ended up driving to Walmart to sleep for the night. There were many other campers and RVs parked there as well.
Sunday morning, we had breakfast at the UFO McDonald’s. The building was shaped like a UFO and had alien statues outside. The play area inside was space-themed. The streetlights along the road were alien heads with Santa hats.
After that, we returned to Planet Fitness to get ready for the day. Then we worked on the website for a bit before walking around downtown. The whole city was very alien-themed. There was a UFO Museum, many souvenir shops, and alien references everywhere. It was very touristy.
After walking around the downtown area, we took the Prius to a car wash to give it a well-deserved cleaning. When we finished cleaning the car and exploring Roswell, we drove on to Alamogordo, a city near White Sands National Park. We plan on working from Alamogordo next week before checking out the national park. Overall, we had a very busy and great week in Texas and New Mexico. Check out more pictures here at Texas and New Mexico!
Fun Facts from Week 37:
- You can mail a postcard from within Carlsbad Caverns.
- Carlsbad Caverns is deeper than the Space Needle is high.
- Carlsbad Caverns is located in the Guadalupe Mountains, the same ones in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
- To create the original elevator shaft in Carlsbad Caverns, blasting and drilling were done simultaneously from the cave and from the surface. The holes were connected after six months almost perfectly aligned.
- At the Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, 80% of the water flowing through does not come from the source of the Rio Grande, but from other sources. This is because so much of the water of the Rio Grande is consumed before it reached the canyon.
