Tuesday, April 26th – Guadlupe Mountains National Park, Texas & Carlsbad, New Mexico – Day 75
Taking the Junior Ranger pledge for Guadalupe Mountain
John looking fresh!
The next day we had a plan to visit the other National Park in the area, Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The kids spent an hour in the morning doing class. The annoying thing is we are now two hours behind eastern standard time so the 9am start has turned into 7am. We still have one more time zone to go. I’m not sure what is going to happen. I wish they had let the kids stay in their normal classes, with the teachers they knew and who knew them and their friends. It’s crazy trying to jump through these hoops.
We ate our breakfast of oatmeal with yogourt or honey or cottage cheese. We gathered all our dirty laundry from Big Bend and put it into the back of the car to be washed. We went to see two springs that were nice but uneventful.
Once that was done, we took off for Texas and Guadalupe Mountains. The drive was only 30 minutes. On the way we saw a fire at the side of the road, probably from a tossed cigarette butt. We tried to phone the fire department but then we passed emergency vehicles racing to the scene. The fire danger level is extreme due to the high wind and drought conditions.
When we got to the visitor centre, we did our normal routine, get the junior ranger books, spend some time looking at the displays and looking through the gift shop. We decided to purchase a pair of walking sticks. I’ve come to appreciate how essential a walking stick is to feeling good after a hike. The kids looked at all the stuffed desert animals and worked on identifying animals and their prints.
Our hike was a few kilometres away and featured an old homestead. We ate lunch at a picnic table before walking through the property with an active spring, barnyard, house, schoolhouse, and cold storage building. They cooled the storage building using the cold spring water. To sell the crops they planted, they would leave in the evening and travel all night before arriving for market the next day.
Once we passed through the homestead, we kept walking along a path with the Mountains a constant presence on our left side. We walked for a while before seeing a small pond and turning around. On the way back we saw a lonely Mule deer hanging out by the path. The difference between a Mule deer and a White-Tailed deer is that the Mule deer always has a white bum while the White-Tailed deer only shows a white bum when scared. Aisling and Charlotte both said they saw the “white bum deer”.
Our next stop was Carlsbad to run errands. John and I got haircuts while waiting for the laundry to finish. It’s something special to sit in the laundromat, with outlets and free Wi-Fi, and just hang out. Gen and the girls went to Dollarama and cleaned the car. We all met up and I took the kids to the park while Gen went into Walmart for groceries. We ate Taco Bell for dinner. At some point we made eating Taco Bell in New Mexico a thing to do; mission accomplished. Back to the trailer for a breezy night.
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