I really wish Texans didn't pronounce "Guadalupe" as "gwahd-ah-loop"

8/12/2016

I woke up bright and early so I could pack up my stuff and head to Guadalupe Mountains National Park! I was feeling pretty hiking-deficient at this point in my trip. Usually by now I’ve gone around a bunch of cool places and hiked my boots off, but time has just not been quite on my side this trip. But that’s okay! I saved this whole day for hiking.

Guadalupe Mountains NP is actually quite a long drive away from Carlsbad, as you have to go on this long roundabout road to get to the hiking side. I was really excited to see what “the Guads” had to offer since I have been here before but only on a class field trip. I’ve never been on any of the more touristy hikes so while I’m somewhat familiar with the nature of the back country areas (cactuses, cliffs, and more cactuses, rooted on some really awesome preserved ancient reef complexes) I haven’t seen any of the things that usually show up in the photographs.

A nice view of Texas's El Capitan (which is of course superior to California's El Capitan, if you ask Texans)

Anyways, you have to go into Texas to get to the Guads, which is kind of confusing because it crosses another time zone but for some reason they keep New Mexico time? This whole trip has been disorienting from the time side of things, really.

I stopped by the Visitor Center to get my customary sticker to put on the road map of the US that I have mounted on a sunshade for Jane’s rear window. Super bummed out when I was informed that their bookstore has closed, which means no stickers! Ahhh!

I endured this overwhelming hardship with as much grace as I could muster and asked about good hikes. My geologist friends have recommended the Permian Reef Trail to me, but that’s a long day hike and the weather was pretty overcast. I figured that if I was going to bother to hike all the way to the top of the Permian Reef Trail, I should probably do it when the weather’s nice. So I put that one on hold for next time. Instead I chose to go to Devil’s Hall, the Frijole Ranch, and a couple of springs whose names I’ve now forgotten.

Jane really starting to look like a mudball now! To my eye, at least...

Devil’s Hall was, at first, a pretty big disappointment just because the weather was crappy. It’s one of those places that you can tell is really beautiful when the light is right. The trail starts off nicely in the foothills and gives you the opportunity to check out the peaks from enough distance to appreciate them, as well as the opportunity to see some wildlife. Mostly I saw lizards.

Then it dips down into the wash in the center of the canyon and from there you hike a couple of miles on loose river rock. This is less than pleasant if the rocks are a little slippery, say… after it’s been raining off and on the past few days. I just watched my step and took it slow.

Eventually the wash narrows and steepens and you start to see really awesome limestone outcrops. I’ll try to keep it light on the geology, but basically the outcrops consist of a bunch of different separate layers of limestone, usually up to about a foot thick, with a “hummocky” texture (instead of just being flat, the layers are kind of wavy and bubbly looking). At first they’re just neat to look at, but further up on the trail the layers are eroded into natural stairways that you climb up and over. Super cool!

A very precariously perched tree

Neat nodules in the top layer of this bench - infilled burrows? Not sure...

The trail culminates in a “hallway” of limestone, appearing manmade (or devil-made, I guess) due to its square-cut nature and smoothed walls. But really it just eroded this way! I’m not entirely sure why it’s eroded here, but it is likely either due to a river or some kind of fracturing. Regardless, it’s awesome. You should go see it, even if you’re not a geology person.

After I poked around out there some, I realized that I had taken way too long on the rocks coming out and had cut my time close for the other trails I wanted to do! So I hoofed it back down the canyon. Fortunately, by the time I got out of the wash, the clouds had cleared, giving me my first good look at the mountains.

But first, look at this silly bush growing upside down

Weird tree - couldn't tell if it was a live tree and a dead tree twisted together, or if just half of the tree was dead, or what! Like I said, weird.

Some days you just don't know what picture of your car to feature so you just feature both. I like the mud splatters.

I snapped some shots and then headed on to the Frijole Ranch, location of an old homestead and a bunch of life-saving springs. The old homestead built in the 1870’s is actually still standing. Now normally when I hear “1870’s” I immediately envision a run-down shack that was falling into the ground even when it was built over a hundred years ago. So imagine my surprise when I came upon the Frijole Ranch House – a beautiful home even by today’s standards.

The house is situated right next to Frijole Springs, which pump out 6 gallons a minute. The homesteaders dammed the springs and built little aqueducts for irrigation and to direct water under storehouses to keep produce cold. Clever! Though the homestead was inhabited up to the 1940’s, most of the changes were not to the spring irrigation setup so much as the outbuildings, which were built as needed to accommodate more people. There’s also an orchard out back that the runoff from the spring feeds. It’s a very unexpected oasis in the middle of the desert scrub. It would have been interesting to live here “back in the day” I’m sure!

After checking out the ranch I wandered on to the other springs. There are 5 springs in the general area, making it a hotspot for wildlife and settlers alike (well, the settlers aren’t here now, but I guess tourists replaced them in that capacity). Kind of hard to photograph as they are mostly surrounded by extremely dense thickets of tall grass. Not that I blame the grass, of course.

A baby lizard that kept wagging its tail at me

Heh, guess what they call this mountain? I bet you know.

Having seen more than enough lizards and being pleased with the hiking I had done, I headed off for my final campsite in Fort Stockton. The problem with living in Austin, you see, is that it’s surrounded by the rest of Texas. And out of the rest of Texas, west Texas in particular is terrible to drive through. I’m sure I mentioned this on my way out. Well, I got smart on the way back and decided that if I could make it partway through the horrors of west Texas, the final day of driving would not feel nearly so awful. So I elected to drive two and a half hours from Guadalupe Mountains NP to Fort Stockton.

Overall, I’d have to say that was a pretty terrible decision. Not because the idea behind it was bad – it definitely wasn’t – but because Fort Stockton is mostly an RV type of place. All of the oil field workers set up their rigs in the RV sites and stay there. And that’s fine! RVs have never bothered me. But it didn’t occur to me that RVs were so prevalent, and that Fort Stockton was so remote and non-touristy, that they would not entertain tent campers very frequently.

And so it was that when I rolled up to the one RV place in town that offered tent “campsites”, I found myself sorely disappointed. It was, by far, the worst campsite I’ve ever been to (and I certainly shouldn’t have paid anything for it). I was directed to a field next to their dog park where I could just set up “wherever” as long as I didn’t drive on the grass because “the sprinklers come on”. The field was half-grassed (and half-assed) so I just plopped my tent down in the grassiest part, figuring that it would help keep rain from pooling under the tent. There was no fire pit. There was no picnic table. Definitely no water. There was nothing. Just a field and Jane, parked haphazardly on an area that I’m pretty sure counted as “the grass” but that didn’t actually have any vegetation growing on it. Fringing the grass was a ring of those stupid spikey horrendous thorn bushes that populate so much of Texas, which I consistently stubbed my toe on as I unloaded my stuff. The campsite owners asked me if I was sure I wanted to camp in a tent because it was supposed to rain. I figured it didn’t matter if it rained on me the last night because I could just drive back home and dry my stuff out there.

I found a picnic table a ways off behind a playground set so I set up my grill there and tried to make hot dogs. I haven’t had hot dogs in years and really suddenly had a craving for one, so I made one! The wind was whipping but I used a pan to keep the hot dog from flying off of the grill. I then ate it and decided I should make two more. I have now eaten enough hot dogs to last me for another few years.

 After my quite satisfying dinner I packed all of my stuff back up – not wanting to get it stolen off of the random picnic table I had commandeered – and stashed it under Jane to keep it dry. Not sure why I didn’t just put it back in the car, but I was just not enjoying the campsite “ambiance” and all I wanted to do was get in my tent. So I did. Jane would keep my stuff safe for me anyways.

This post ends with me in a tent in the middle of a field, snuggled in my sleeping back enjoying a book while Jane watches over me – protectively, I’d like to think, though likely more in the capacity of a bully who’s claimed possession of a particularly entertaining target. The next post will start somewhat sooner than expected…