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.

Unfortunately, neither was possible. After arriving slightly ahead of schedule, we entered the visitor center and chatted with the ranger. I asked what hiking was available, the ranger answered “not much really.” The one trail in the NRA was flooded – and was only 2 miles long to begin with, connecting the visitor center parking lot with a boat ramp. Yikes. To his credit, the ranger did come up with a couple of bushwhacking possibilities, but none of them sounded very exciting, even after a full day of driving. In the end, we drove to a couple of dayuse areas, snapped some quick pictures, drove out to the dam, snapped a few more pictures, and called the unit “done.”

If we return, we’ll be sure to bring a kayak and paddle out to Panther Cave, and maybe plan a day at the local state park – which seems to have some great trails and archaeology. But, to be honest, this is one of those units that we yawn at and reluctantly visit just to get the passport stamp and pin and check off the list. This is clearly one of those National Park units that should not be managed by the NPS – instead, it should be run by the Army Corps of Engineers or BLM.

After the disappointment of Amistad, we headed back to Del Rio, the city we were staying in. We spent awhile stealing wifi from the hotels while we decided where to stay, finally ending up at a Best Western (using a AAA discount despite the fact we aren’t members – hotels rarely ask for the card, so it’s worth the risk for the 10% you get off). Then it was over to Applebee’s for dinner. Kim was craving an Applebee’s salad and I had promised a stop last night. Unfortunately, the steak and shrimp dish I ordered was horrible – so much so that I hardly ate any of it, and the waitress offered to remove it from the check as soon as she saw it sitting mostly untouched at the edge of the table and before we could mention how crappy it had been.  After a couple of quick stops, we grabbed a to go order from Chili’s and made it back to the hotel room to watch Oregon pound Oklahoma State and discuss Mike Shanahan’s firing.

Tomorrow we’re off to Big Bend National Park, the highlight park of the roadtrip. We have a couple of options for the rest of the trip. One is camping in Big Bend tomorrow night and spending a full two days there before heading over to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Chamizal National Memorial before returning home. Otherwise, if we feel like we’ve done enough to get a good taste of the park (we’ll be back for a kayaking trip in the next several years), then we might stay until dusk then head out to a motel in Alpine. That would give us an extra day that we could use to stop by Carlsbad Caverns National Park, which happens to be tantalizingly close to Guadalupe Mountains.

That’s probably because our comfort level with these trips has dramatically increased. It’s also, frankly, probably a product of better gear. And by better gear, I mostly mean my iPhone 3G, which affords us internet access while we drive in the car. That’s incredibly useful – heck, we planned, researched, and reserved everything we needed for our big summer trip across the South on it – and so it feels like we don’t quite need to be as prepared as we often are.

It’s also due to fact that we’re getting by with much less gear, especially for camping, that we used to bring. And we could probably further cut down on what we’re bringing, if only I we had enough time to think about it and make the necessary eliminations.

Finally, I know that Kim’s put quite a bit of time in trip planning. And she’s getting pretty good at it. We’re both mostly on the same page when it comes to roadtrip decisions, and I felt more comfortable this time around letting her pick hotels and routes without any involvement. Speaking of itineraries, here’s what we have planned:

Dec 24 – Depart Phoenix, drive to El Paso to see Chamizal National Memorial, continue on to camp at Big Bend National Park.

Dec 25-26 – Spend both days seeing Big Bend (and the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River that runs through it), camping these nights as well.

Dec 27 – Depart Big Bend, hit Amistad National Recreation Area, and continuing driving southeast, staying at an EconoLodge in a town called Harlingen.

Dec 28 – Drive to Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site, then visit Padre Island National Seashore, camping there or nearby somewhere.

Dec 29 – Drive to Big Thicket National Preserve, explore the park, and find somewhere nearby to camp.

Dec 30 – Head into San Antonio to see San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, adding a stop at – what else – The Alamo. Stay in an EconoLodge in the city.

Dec 31 – Finish up San Antonio, drive up to the Lyndon B Johnson National Historic Site, and then over to Austin to spend New Year’s Eve and part of New Year’s Day. Stay in a Days Inn.

Jan 1 – Explore Austin a bit more before hitting the road and driving back west. Camp somewhere near Fort Davis.

Jan 2 – Visit Fort Davis National Historic Site and drive to Guadalupe Mountains National Park where we’ll camp for the night.

Jan 3 – Finish up Guadalupe Mountains and high-tail it back to Phoenix, arriving late.

Jan 4 – Rest, relax and unpack before starting back at work on Monday, or…finish driving home if we haven’t kept to our schedule.

It should be a good time. We’ll add eleven National Park Service units to our lifetime total, and more importantly, complete all of the units in Texas. That will make only the seventh state we’ve completed (Nevada, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Tennessee, and Kentucky are the others), though we’re only one or two units away from finishing Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Indiana, and Missouri (not including Eastern and Midwestern states with only one or two units).

We’ll try to keep the blog updated, but with so few nights of guaranteed wifi, that may not happen that frequently. However, you can check out Scott’s tweet’s here and Kim’s tweets here for shorter updates, as well as some summary posts right here.

Scott’s also posted a map of our route and a quick explanation of why we chose this roadtrip.