January 23, 2005 - Drive to Guadelupe Mountains National Park, Texas

Although there was still a petroleum museum down the road that looked mighty interesting, we decided to continue on to the Guadalupe Mountains in western Texas. I had been intrigued by a poster Martin brought home after hiking in those mountains. The poster showed a gorgeous panorama of lush green peaks thrusting skyward from a desert floor and I decided I would stop by to take a look if we were ever in the area. We definitely wanted to see Carlsbad Caverns, and if we camped in the Guadalupe Mountains we would be just 50 or so miles away. Since the Guadalupe Mountains National Park had camping and Carlsbad Caverns National Monument did not, we decided to camp in the Guadalupe Mountains and make that our next base of operations.

The land became more and more arid as we drove through west Texas. I couldn't tell exactly when it became a desert, but I certainly started seeing more varieties of cactus than just the occasional prickly pear, and they all looked healthy, or at least as healthy as cacti every look, which is not very in my opinion. I also started to see the word "desert" pop up more and more often on highway billboards, although how valid that clue was to the true state of the ecology I am not sure. After driving west southwest on Interstates 20 and 10, we turned north at Van Horn and followed Texas highway 54 pretty much due north into the mountains.

Highway 54 seemed to have a split personality; the first ½ of it was old, cracked macadam with narrow lanes and soft or non-existent shoulders. It would have been quite tense driving with the trailer if there had been any traffic, but there was essentially none-I was passed by only 2 or 3 cars in about an hour's worth of driving. Thus I could kind of hug the centerline and not worry about the trailer running off onto the soft shoulder. At the midpoint, however, Highway 54 turned into a newly surfaced asphalt road with broad lanes, paved shoulders, and nice clear paint stripes. That meant I could just center myself in my lane and not worry about the trailer, so the driving from that point on was much more relaxing.

The Guadalupe Mountains loomed into view just north of the road in a rather spectacular fashion with their white limestone cliffs burnished by the sun. They do in fact jut up rather abruptly from the surrounding desert, and that made them look rugged. However, they are also rain-catchers, and many of the slopes are covered with vegetation of one kind or another. In a way, that makes them look less austere than other desert mountains. Certainly after living in Virginia for decades I am used to the forest-covered Appalachians and rather prefer mountains with a soft green coat.

We circled to the east a bit on a great 4-lane highway that lead up and into the park, and then turned in at the Visitor Center to find our campground. The campground turned out to be located just ¼ mile or so back up into this tremendous bowl in the mountains. The tent folks had secluded spots of sand among the cacti and struggling bushes, but we RV types had to make do with an oversized parking lot marked off for each "site". We chose site 30 as it was at one end and had a bit of earth and a picnic table beside it that we thought we might use if we had our meals al fresco. We had no water, electric, or sewer connections, of course, but on the other hand it did have flush toilets and the standard rate was $8 a night (we were paying only half that due to an Old Fogies Discount).

The view from the parking lot was absolutely fantastic. Mountains arched skyward in roughly a ¾ circle surrounding us, a truly wonderful sight. It felt like I was living inside a postcard, a feeling that I have only had a few times before in my life, such as the day I rode my motorcycle up the Rhein River in Germany or when I flew smack down the middle of the Grand Canyon in an 1909A, old Cessna 150C (I hasten to add that although illegal now, that was legal when I did it back in 1986 or 87). It's curious that I can remember without any effort the call signs for all the aircraft I have flown including 4478D, the Beechcraft Bonanza that I first learned to fly in, 1909A that was the first airplane I ever owned, and the old 5642R that I flew for many hundreds of hours. I think horse people remember the names of all their horses, at least I think my sister Phyllis does, so I suspect that it's just a natural result of having some obsessive (or perhaps excessive!) avocation.

After having a late lunch, we didn't really have time for any of the trails, besides which we were too tired, so we took the short walk down to the Visitor Center. The friendly indeed enthusiastic lady at the front desk gave us lots of information, advice, and even invited us into an adjacent room to see a very nice slideshow on the mountains. After the show we looked at a small but very nicely executed set of exhibits on the flora, fauna, and geological origins of the Guadalupe Mountains. It turned out that the mountains were an ancient ocean reef formed not so much by coral like modern reefs as by an accumulation of sponges and associated simple animals with carbonate shells.

From the Visitor Center we took the short nature trail over to the remains of an 1858 stagecoach depot. The Butterfield Overland Mail Company first routed its line through these mountains from St. Louis to California. Persistent Indian attacks forced a relocation of the line a ways to the south the following year, so this depot had only been used a little over a year, but it was built of rock and some of the walls had endured. I imagine the experience was something like Mark Twain's account I had just read in "Roughing It" of riding the overland stage in the 1860s. Twain's story of lying on top of the bags of mail in the coach and peering out the windows at the changing landscape leapt to mind, as well as his tales of encountering outlaws, Indians, and Mormons along the way.

The sun slid behind a layer of clouds as we returned to our campsite, and we had a small evening meal of sandwiches before settling in for the night. I processed the panoramic pictures on Baby and brought the journal up to date while Monika crocheted by the light of two fluorescent Coleman lanterns powered by D cells. We were intending to stay for 3 nights, so we tried to avoid using the trailer's battery whenever we could, and, in the same vein, tried to be very cautious with the fresh water use. Fortunately, the trailer's propane heating system was still functional (we hadn't used it in many months) and worked quite well on 12-volt power alone, so we didn't freeze. In fact, the occasional clunk, whoosh, and whirr of the system kept us quite comfortable and the only fly in the ointment was the stove vent flapping in the wind gusts. It sounded like a sudden slap or whack and was loud enough and random enough to keep me awake, and I finally got up, threw some layers of clothes on, and went out into a beautiful moonlit night to secure it. After that, I could at least get back to sleep.