Guadalupe Peak, TX
October 30 - Nov 4, 2022
Wanting to get away for a short trip out of Colorado, Laura, Hazel and I decided to join our friends Joe and Mareshah on a trip south to a few National Parks. Breaking up the drive, we made a stopover in Santa Fe. We visited the spiral staircase in Loretto Chapel as I recalled visiting there in my childhood. It was as unique as I had remembered.
We also spent a few hours exploring Pecos National Monument. We walked and explored the history, Pueblos and ruins.
In Santa Fe we went to a museum with Day of the Dead shrines and native American dancers as well as explored the city center where indians were selling their hand made jewelry and other wares.
After a relaxing time in Santa Fe, we drove through Roswell and made a stop at the international UFO museum before we met up with Joe and Mareshah at Carlsbad Caverns for the bat flight.
The bat flight was a very interesting and fun thing to experience. About 1 million bats live in the cave and each night near dusk they fly out in groups to eat. As it was the last day of October, about half of the bats had migrated to Mexico already but seeing 400,000 bats fly out of a cave is a really neat experience. They appeared as huge clouds in the sky as the groups flew away from the cave and it took about 15 minutes for all of them to leave. After feeding overnight, the bats return each morning sometime before dawn.
Carlsbad Caverns is a great destination and the best showcase of geology I have ever seen. All of us walked the mile down into the cave, explored the big room and did a tour of the King's Palace. Pictures don't do this place justice.
We camped several nights in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The first day we hiked to Devil's Hall, a 5 mile round trip hike that tested Mareshah and her recovery from recent surgery on a broken ankle.
Guadalupe Peak was one of our main goals on the trip and on our last day we had nice weather for the hike. The 5 of us met at the trailhead and started hiking at about 10 am. With a slow and steady pace, we summitted 3 hours after leaving trailhead. There is an excellent trail the entire way and since it is not steep and rocky, it was easy having Hazel in the backpack. We all relaxed on the summit for a half hour before heading down. I went ahead as I knew that Mareshah would be stepping very carefully going down hill and with Hazel, a more steady pace is much easier. Hazel and I reached the trailhead in about 2 hours and ate some snacks while relaxing in our camp chairs until the rest of the group got back down. We celebrated with a beer and a nice steak for dinner at the campsite.
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