The trick to finding the fun:  get up early before the heat (mornings are in the 70s here – perfect), pick a hike that you can talk your kids into (Guadalupe Peak’s 8+ mile hike to the highest peak in Texas will have to wait), know that there will be something along the way to capture their interest (thanks National Parks FB Group for tips and pictures of this hike). So that’s what we did – we hiked 2+ miles from the visitor center to Devil’s Hall. Loved it. And hiked the 2+ miles back out. 

Instead of hiking up the Guadalupe mountains under the hot NM/TX sun, we hiked down into a canyon, followed a dry river bed that offered shade, climbed awesome rock formations nicked-named “the stairs”, and found the narrow canyon passage named Devil’s Hall that was actually more heavenly then hellish – cool and shaded this early in the morning! We rested, had snacks, spent time being silly, and took a bunch of photos. Once the kids start taking silly photos it’s hard to get them to stop. We had to remind them that outside our cool passage way the sun was only getting hotter so we finally said goodbye and headed back. On the return trail we saw a total of 6 people our entire morning in the park. Six. This park only sees 200k+ visitors a year compared to Great Smokey Mountains National Park’s 12 million+ visitors. It was kinda nice having the place to ourselves! 

Then we drove. Packed up Crystal Betty, said good bye to Texas, for real this time, and headed for Alamogordo, NM. This was a crazier drive than we expected! We drove out of the Sacramento Mountains and dropped 4000 feet in 13 miles with plenty of signage to warn you this was tough on trucks. Crystal was working pretty hard today. I always picture NM as a fairly flat state for some reason but I won’t anymore! 

We were happy to be back at a KOA campground for the night with cleaner showers and a pool for the kids to jump in. The Whites City RV Park had no pool but it did have laundry so it was the first day on the trip I had dry towels! So far, every time I’ve done a wash the swim stuff is immediately used and wet again. While I enjoyed having clean towels for a couple days the wet ones don’t really bother me that much… it’s a part of camping you just accept. This whole trip has inherent discomforts, it’s like skiing – even the best days of skiing you know you’re going to be cold or wet or have an uncomfortable boot or have to deal with foggy goggles at some point but that never trumps the actual experience. We all LOVE a day of skiing and we are all LOVING camping life. 

Okay, so the weirdest part of the last couple days: we’ve been straddling the central and mountain time zones and our source of information, our cell phones, keep bouncing between the two so it is really hard to keep track of the time! In Guadalupe Mountain National Park you are actually in mountain time zone but the only cell tower that reaches here is located in central time zone so you’ll never have the right time here. A few times our phones even disagreed with each other. But we’re on vacation so who cares?

Monday, July 26th, 2021