Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

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Copyright © 1994 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

April 10, 1994

Roaming Around in New Mexico and Texas

3x3x3: 3 Nat'l Parks in 3 Days by 3 People

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: USA, New Mexico, Texas, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

April was/is a pretty busy month for me. All parties cancelled and lots of extra work. Despite that I was "forced" into taking a mini vacation. Since I had an airline ticket that expired in a few days which I didn't want to throw away, I decided to fly to New Mexico for the weekend. A trip worth while. It turned out really exceptionally pleasant.

In three days we toured 3 nat'l parks and one state park. That must be a record, even for me. Even though it sounds like we were following a crazy pace we did have time to go strolling around through some fascinating scenery each day for a few hours. It also helped to be the "passenger" without driving responsibilities that usually tire me out.

Before departing I expected the worst, rain and even snow fall. New Mexico can have chilly springs, but to my surprise when I stepped out of the airport it was warmer than in San Jose. Actually much warmer than San Jose. Don and Andrew picked me up at the airport and we started heading south for a short while. It was already 9 or 10pm, so we called it quits for the day. The following morning the sunshine tickled our noses, and we got up early to head for El Paso, at the Mexican border. New Mexico's heartland is similar to Arizona, but more run down. El Paso isn't much better, a bigger city, which plenty of nude shows and car dealers, and concrete covering all the areas next to the freeway such as median and shoulder. Looking across the river one can see all the shacks of the Mexican population. And the industry is noticable on both sides, big factories, dust, ... Another thing that is noticable is the INS trucks with their unusual shade of light green.

From El Paso we headed east to the Guadalupe Nat'l Park which encompases the Guadalupe Peak the highest mountain in Texas. The temperatures were not just warm but hot. I loved it. Finally it's summer (at least in some places). It's always such a positive feeling if the sun shines in a blue sky without a single cloud, and the beams warm your face. Since Texas overall is flat the mountain range doesnb't have to be all that hiugh to be the highest in Texas. 8500 ft just about do it. While the foothills are primarily desert with somne shrubs, once one reaches the higher elevations where cooler air brings some moisture the landscape changes, and somewhat surprisingly one finds trees here throwing a shade to the delight of the hikers. The view from the top is unique. Nothing but badland as far as the eye can see. But badland doesn't have to be bad. Occationally it's great to be away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The evening we spent in the campground at the foot of the mountain. The next morning we continued at another superlative. "The most beautiful spot of Texas" just a few miles away. It's also referred to as McKittrick Valley. I am not sure if it's really the nicest spot in the Lone Star state, but it's a nice hike along a creek where the water flows partially underground and partially on the creek bed surface. Since one can never see too many sights, we put one more sight on our schedule: Carlsbad Cavern. Once inhabitated by 8 million bats, now reduced to a modest 250,000 (a meager 3% of its former colony size) which is called a minor reduction by the park service, Carlsbad Cavern have a lot to offer. We didn't see a single bat and hardly any guano (bat dung) since they are all on "winter vacation" in Mexico. They'll return in May. So we missed the supposedly impressing "Like a bat outa the cave" spectacle that occurs daily in the summer when the bats head out for their nightly food hunt. Instead we enlightened ourselves by walking through the mile long paths in the biggest lime stone cave in the western hemisphere. Ahhh, we love superlatives. Talking about superlatives, did you know that I am the smartest and strongest guy in the world ([in fineprint] whose first name is Manfred and who is born in October and who has a scare on his head and his behind)? Sorry, just joking but since everyone loves superlatives, people always come up with stupid sideconditions such that they can call something they identfy themselves with the best, the longest, the biggest, ... However, the cave is big, and I mean BIG. The paths stretch for many miles. Most of the cave is closed off to the general public. Some parts of the cave are still unexplored. In particular, the part of the cave inhabitated by the bats is off-limits for people like you and me. The formations that are the biggest you can find anywhere in the US are sometimes 10 yards big and most likely weigh tons. Formations include simple stalectites, stalegmites, "curtains", "pop-corn", columns, and more. The further one walks into the cave the deeper one gets under the groundlevel. So, at the end of the tour which took several hours we ended up some few hundred yards under the ground level and lazy as we are we took the elevator back to the surface. Once back in the day light, dusk was approaching and we started our stretch westward. Just like in the good ol' days, we were riding into the sunset. And we kept riding till it was pitch dark.

The break of a new day woke my friends up. I slept like a log and whould have snoozed till noon if my friends didn't kick me out of bed. After a tiny breakfast we headed for the nearby White Sands Nat'l Monument. White Sands up to this day was synonym with the ICBM missile base to me. The only other thing about White Sands I knew was the computer break-in of the German hackers into the air force computer system. Today I would learn something new. White Sands had a nat'l monument just miles from the missile silos. Once you are within the nat'l monument, you know why they called the city White Sands. The heart of this natural wonder is an area of dunes made out of pure white sand. Just like in Death Valley, it is a big joy to roll around in the dunes and to play with them. A playground made by nature. We were nearly the only people there and like a little kid I was rolling and hopping around in this huge sand box. The sun was shinning and we stretched out for a few minutes to soak up the warmth. The scenery was quite impressive too. White dunes formed the foreground, a dark brown to black mountain chain with sharp edges contrasted the white foreground and its soft curves. Above it all was the deep blue sky. Like all good things, time comes to move on and to leave things behind. With sand in my hair, my pants, and other places we left the dunes behind.

It was time to head back to the airport. We more or less had seen as much as one could possibly see in three days. From the highest spot in Texas to several hundred yards below ground level, from the creek in the McKitrick Valley to the dunes in White Sands, we have seen it all. Like in the Mountain Dew commercial we can now say "Seen it, been there, done that." To top it off we stopped at one more sight on the way back: The Valley of the Fires, as the Indian named it, is a lava flow in central New Mexico. A tiny state park is in the middle of the 44 mile long stretch of black rocks. It's not too impressive.

Hours later we were back in civilization. A great weekend that made us all richer by several new experiences.