When we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns, however, we learned that there were indeed some tours available – including a special “holiday” tour of King’s Palace by lantern. Even though it would add an extra day onto the trip, we pounced on the opportunity. We quickly made our way down the trail to the natural entrance – an incredibly impressive way to experience the cave. After the 750-foot descent, we wandered through the first half of the Big Room self-guided tour before grabbing a quick snack and making our way to the guided tour meeting place. This tour was a lot of fun – it’s a much different experience to explore a developed cave with only lantern-light. Kim had an especially good time.

After the ninety-minute tour was over, we headed back to finish the back end of the Big Room. With growling stomachs, we took the elevator up to the visitor center, had lunch in the adjoining restaurant, and got our passport stamp and pin.

We then hopped in the car and drove back west to McKittrick Canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park to get a passport stamp that we had missed the previous day. Unfortunately, the visitor contact station is closed, and, windy as ever, we decided to skip any short hikes in the area. It was late in the afternoon at this point, and it was obvious that we would not make it to Chamizal before they closed – and we certainly wouldn’t make it home tonight.

We ended up staying in a Ramada in El Paso, a decent suite room that comes complete with kitchenette and mini living room. After eating dinner out, we returned to the room to watch the conclusion of a bowl game and plot tomorrow’s schedule. The plan is to arrive at Chamizal National Memorial across town at 10am when they open, spend approximately an hour there, and then start heading home.

Unless we’re feeling anxious to get home early, we may stop at Fort Bowie National Historic Site, the only NPS Arizona site we haven’t done yet. We’re hoping to start working on our trip photos and summary page this weekend.

After sleeping in a bit and enjoying our nice hotel room, we loaded up and hit the road. A few hours of driving later, we found ourselves at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. A very windy Guadalupe Mountains – gusts were above 55mph with sustained winds of 15-20 mph. We did the visitor center and headed off to do a 4-mi hike to Devil’s Hall. Less than a mile into it, we turned around and headed back to the car – it was just so cold and windy that hiking wasn’t much fun. Instead of hiking up the canyon, which seemed to be funneling the wind down towards us at an incredible pace, we headed out to a couple of shorter trails on the foothills.

They were pretty short, but we still enjoyed them and have our eyes on returning – at a less windy future date – and doing some longer hikes up Guadalupe Mountain. The park, even though it’s on the road to Carlsbad and about an hour away, sees less than half of the visitation. That’s a shame, but probably due in part to its low profile and lack of easy, family-oriented trails and overlooks. Instead, most of its trails are long and its scenic drives of the 4WD variety. It also boasts the largest point in Texas, plus an iconic peak named El Capitan (though it still doesn’t hold a candle to the original). At 5700 feet, the park is relatively high and sees snow – it also contains the highest stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route.

After our short hikes, it was getting late and we headed on to our hotel in Carlsbad, a pretty crappy Super 8. Tomorrow we’ll be hitting Carlsbad Caverns National Park, doing the natural entrance hike and touring the Big Room. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get tickets to any guided tours, so we’ll have to save that part of Carlsbad until our next trip out here to see ASU play in the Sun Bowl. After Carlsbad, we’re heading back to El Paso to mark Chamizal National Memorial off our list. From there, it’s about a seven hour drive home. That puts us back home a day earlier than originally planned, but it’ll be nice to have some more time to decompress before the next year really gets started. Also, we’ve gone over budget on this trip due to our hotel stays after we ditched our camping plans because I was sick, so it’ll be nice to save some cash.

I’m not sure if we’ll get a chance to post an update about tomorrow’s events – we’ll return home pretty late at night – but we’ll get a full trip summary up soon on the trips page. Thanks for following along, and Happy New Year.