Guadalupe National Park

We left Hueco Tanks State Park late in the morning with the morning tour not only full, but full of archeologists who planned on a four hour hike!   Onward to the next stop of Guadalupe National Park!

It was a very slow haul, up up up the mountains with a head wind.  We got 10 MPG and it took nearly 2 hours to go 90 miles.  We arrived at the campground and set up.  It sure was an out of the way place.  Seems Guadalupe National Park is one of the least visited National Parks  The campground was snuggled up against El Capitan and the high point for Texas. See Marco down there?

We decided to take a walk up the mountain!  Which way to go?

I wanted El Capitan but Lew wanted Devils Hall so we went with Devils Hall.  Just a bit up the canyon one could see the pollution in the sky.  The visitor's center is monitoring it daily.  We have been astonished with the pollution in the West.  Its everywhere we go.  We think we should see clear crisp mountains, but instead its hazy and not very nice. See where the pink ends?  It changes and that along with the thickness is what the visitor's center monitors.

Along the way we see a tree with red leaves!  Lew swears they are berries.  I had to scramble around until I could see that they were berries.  He is right.  Its a Texas Malone tree and has fall red berries.  Very pretty.

The walk took us up a canyon. It was a great way to end our day.  We hurried it a bit so that we were back before the sun went behind a mountain.