2025 Road Trip: Part 9 (Guadalupe NP + White Sands NP)

Guadalupe National Park, TX

Day 9
5.30.25

Six a.m. the next morning came very early for us, and even me, the enthusiastic hiker about to try and summit Texas's tallest peak, didn't want to get out of the tent in the dark. I told myself that it will be worth it and just to start the pack-up process, and I'd feel better. My one regret of leaving camp so early is that we had found such a nice spot with decent amenities, only to not have a chance to use them for dinner or breakfast...such is life sometimes.

The sky had become overcast overnight, with some spots shrouded in a misty haze as the cloud layer was barely off the ground. We packed up quickly and decided to forgo breakfast at this hour since I'd be bringing snacks with me on the hike anyway, and Yilin would be staying at the trailhead and usually likes to wait until a reasonable hour to eat.

Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe National Parks are conveniently right along the same mountain range, only about a 30-35 mile drive away, and with the roads being so deserted and straight, the trip passed quickly as the the light brightened and we made the turn toward Pine Springs campground, where the Guadalupe Peak trail sets off from.

The view as we approached was almost heavenly, with pockets of blue sky peeking through the mist, just to give a glimpse of some sunrise colors over my right shoulder. As I stopped to take a photo of the entrance sign, suddenly the sky was clear, and I got a view of the mountains in front of me, while the valley behind me was still misty.

Good morning to Guadalupe National Park

First light is always such a motivation for me

In the short time it took me to get my gear organized and snacks packed for the longest hiked I've done in awhile, the clouds (or fog I suppose) rolled in once again, blocking the grand view I had mere minutes earlier. I hoped this was just a case of undercast, and I would pop above the clouds at some point later in the day. This hike is about 8.4 miles, with 3000 feet of elevation gain, not unlike many NH 4000-footers I've completed in the past, however since moving to Maryland I think my legs have gotten a bit soft without a lot of good hiking options nearby. Also, I'd be climbing over 8k, and I expected to feel this quite a bit in my lungs since none of my travels had taken me this high on this trip thus far.

I began up the misty trail around 7:45, which had a pleasant cooling effect, and while much of the elevation gain of this trail happens in the first half, the grade was manageable with lots of switchbacks, and mostly gravel and sand underfoot, and a few ledgy patches here and there. I only saw a few hikers, but it was a quiet morning on the mountain, likely due to the cloudy conditions. After about 15-20 minutes, I started to see some sandstone cliff faces appear faintly in front of me, and I knew I'd be out of the cloud tops shortly, which gave me a boost of energy.

I turned the corner with the mountain to my left and the sun behind me to the right, and followed the trail slowly up and around, with the most fluffy sea of clouds you've ever seen filling the valley below. This was certainly fun now! And then behind me I heard the unmistakable sounds of a fast approaching hiker, whom I greeted and exchanged my awe at the beautiful scene we had before us this morning. I was happy to meet Nizar from Lincoln NE, and learn that he and I were on similar national park trips, but traveling in opposite directions. He was headed to Big Bend after this, and had just come from White Sands where I'd be going later this very day. We got some pictures of each other at this vista before I hiked on ahead and he stopped to enjoy some morning tea and breakfast.

Thanks Nizar for this cool shot!

Here's one of Nizar perched on the rock enjoying his tea

From here, I trekked back and forth along the switchbacks, enjoyed any moments in the shade, since the sun was doing a great job baking me even at the early hour. I should have expected as much since clouds in the valley like this occur when there's a temperature inversion, and it gets warmer with elevation rather than cooling down as usual. I was thankful for my new light sun hoodie that I found at REI before leaving on the trip, since I knew I'd be out in the desert sun at least a few times, and I know I'm bad about applying sunscreen.

Looking across the valley toward Hunter Peak

As I passed some forested patches on the mountain, I had to stop and smell the ponderosa pines—their bark smells strongly of butterscotch. Find the largest tree you can, and find a deep crack in the bark, and there you'll find the strongest scent. One of my favorite parts of hiking in the west!

Soon I spotted some lizards flitting around as I approached 8000', and I was certainly noticing the thin air at this point. My symptoms are that I tend to feel very sleepy, and of course my heart rate gets a bit out of control. I just had to give myself enough breaks to continue, and slow my pace a bit near the end. 

Desert Spiny Lizard

Because of this, I saw Nizar catching up again, and I guess all the marathons he runs give him the power and speed to get up above 8000 without too much trouble. We hiked together for a bit before he continued up to summit ahead of me, but I was happy to arrive before he left, and we got a chance to chat a bit more. He shared with me some of his photos and recommendations from his visits to Petrified Forest NP and Mesa Verde NP (the latter I was planning to visit in a few days), and I certainly felt the itch to do some more big hikes again after hearing his stories. He is originally from Iraq but came to Nebraska back in 2019, working in immigration law, and luckily has the opportunity to travel and explore many of the great places that we have here in the US. Happy trails and happy hiking, I'll be following along! You can follow his adventures at nizar01011900.blogspot.com.

These clouds blew me away overlooking El Capitan, just below Guadalupe Peak

At the summit with Nizar (and the weird triangle monument) 8,750'

Lucky Duck along for the ride

I enjoyed my lunch for a bit after Nizar sped off down the mountain, taking in the strange but beautiful landscape around me - half blanketed in clouds, and half exposed to the hot desert sun, and hardly a sound besides the light breeze in my face.

The trip down was mostly uneventful, only slowing down on portions of trail with uneven footing, but the rest of the trail was a pleasant grade to make fast progress. I passed many groups of hikers on their way up, and it was sooner than I expected that I once again entered the valley clouds. They had risen higher than on my ascent, but I welcomed this as I was feeling much too hot from the sun. It's like returning to an underworld.

Some trees have such character

I made it back to the car just after noon, spending about 4.5 hours on the mountain. While I don't consider myself a desert lover, I would have to rate this hike very highly, and especially my experience this day, with the interesting weather, and meeting a fellow hiker who seems to be even more passionate about it than me, which I don't encounter often.

Yilin had spent much of the morning gaining back the missed hours of sleep I robbed us of in the morning, but had enjoyed some brunch featuring leftovers from El Jimador the night before. I relaxed a bit, changed out of my hiking outfit into some comfy traveling clothes, and we stopped into the small park visitor center before planning out the rest of our day in New Mexico.

I wanted to check out a scenic overlook of El Capitan I saw on the map a few miles south of the park entrance, hoping that my clear view from the mountain into the valley would mean a clear view back up from the road. Turns out I was right, and we were treated to a grand and majestic view of El Capitan.

El Capitan, TX

From here, we decided to head up to alien-town, none other than Roswell, NM! Not a planned stop, but it seems like a place with so much UFO and alien lore that we were both curious to see what's going on over there.

Roswell, NM

We whizzed our way back north along US-62 through Carlsbad and then along US-285. Did I mention it's flat around here? Lots of oil, lots of small bushes, a lot of sand, occasional salt beds, but the big surprise was a number of large pistachio farms. Until this day, we didn't know that New Mexico is known for pistachio production, and it took several times passing the unnaturally-green groves of trees before we saw a huge billboard advertising PistachioLand, that we put it all together.

Arriving in Roswell 2 hours later, we were interested in seeing allegedly one of the most unique McDonald's in the world here, apparently UFO themed, as well as the Roswell visitor center, and the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Stepping out of the car, it was so hot, I think I'd be seeing aliens too if I lived here. Even the street lamps have alien eyes on them, a nice touch, or ominous clue, you decide. Also the inflatable tube-alien was the star of this block.

The Roswell visitor center was a bit disappointing (for humans at least), just not much to see except some knickknacks and gift shop items, so we walked over to the UFO Museum, to see what this was about. First step of course was to pin ourselves on the guest map.

The rest of the museum was mostly about alleged military sightings or strange encounters, with some borderline conspiracy films showing in a little theater, and a lot of alien sculptures. I don't know how much I believe, or even how much they believe, but the culture is thick with aliens and UFOs here, for better or worse. The gift shop has every item you can think of related to this topic.

Some extra eyes never hurt anyone...

McDonald's had some visitors outside, but sadly no green Big Mac or even a green milkshake :(

With our stomachs full of alien food, it was time to head to the east toward White Sands National Park. We were not keen on visiting here in the heat of the day, so the time spent in Roswell was actually a blessing, as we'd be arriving in White Sands around sunset time, where we could get a bit of a walk in before it got too dark. The drive over there would take us through the Sacramento Mountains on US-70 toward Tularosa. While crossing the mountains, we had a scenic drive up and around some hills, with higher slopes covered in ponderosas. Yilin even spotted some elk near the road at once point. Eventually we drove through Alamogordo, which it turns out is where PistachioLand is located, we had only seen a far-out sign for it earlier. Only at the last second did we realize we had passed the world's largest pistachio, so we had to turn around to make sure we didn't just hallucinate. But yes indeed, there was a 30-foot pistachio standing proud. Unfortunately our timing was not great as the accompanying shop was closed, but we can offer this sunset view of our friendly pistachio:

World's Largest Pistachio, Alamogordo NM

A few miles down the road and we began to see a strange sight on the horizon - it looked a bit like clouds, then mountains, but we weren't sure. Then I realized we were looking at what looks like huge snowbanks 10-20 feet tall way in the distance, but this was actually gypsum sand in the park ahead. Neither of us expected dunes like this to be above the road, though it does seem logical in retrospect.

White Sands National Park, NM

We arrived to the gatehouse just before 8pm, with the sun still sitting slightly above the horizon, lighting up the adjacent cloudscape brightly with pinks, oranges, yellows, and reds. I'm not sure if White Sands allows nighttime visitors, but if not, we we early enough to get in an evening stroll through the dunes, so we drove a ways in and stopped at the Dune Life Nature Trailhead. The trail from here forms a short 1-mile loop marked by plastic markers and occasional signposts featuring different animals that live in or around the dunes. I could see how easy it would be to get lost here without those markers or a GPS, so I was happy to have AllTrails loaded with our chosen trail and tracking us just in case.

8pm and still 88°, but we had a perfect breeze!

Due to the abundant sand here, and also its extremely fine nature, we chose crocs for footwear, since anything with socks seemed like we'd be finding sand in everything for days, if not weeks.

Just a side note on the sand here - it's gypsum crystals, which is quite rare in the world of sand. As I understand, much of the desert southwest was once an inland sea, and the area was uplifted millions of years ago through tectonic activity. The surrounding mountains are composed of gypsum from prior deposition during the time of the inland sea, and since gypsum dissolves in water, any rain or snowmelt washes these minerals downhill into the Tularosa basin, which has no natural outlet, so the water evaporates instead, causing the gypsum to recrystallize to form selenite crystals. Selenite is the crystalline form of gypsum, known to be fragile and brittle. We didn't see any examples, but the NPS website says there are some examples of extremely large selenite crystals as large as bicycle tires! It is the fragile nature of these crystals that cause it to erode into such a fine grained sand. Check out the website for more info if you're interested.

After walking on the sand for a few minutes, we discovered it's much easier (and very comfortable) to walk barefoot instead, so we carried our shoes instead, and let the cool sand filter between our toes. It was amazing how white it was, even being directly on it, you'd be fooled into thinking the trail is going over snow drifts, except for when you see some bushes and trees growing sporadically around you.

Sunset stroll

A tree made for sitting

Alamogordo lights in the distance

Trying to stay upright sliding down the last dune back to the parking lot

We did not see much wildlife during our short visit to White Sands, however I'd be wrong to exclude our dear friend, the stinkbug:

Look at the cute footprints!

We couldn't have asked for a better time to visit White Sands, I really think evening is the only safe time to visit some of these desert locations, otherwise you get fried. I would love to come back another time and explore a bit deeper into the park. I read there are monthly moonlight hikes led by a ranger, which seems like it would be a unique experience I'd like to try sometime.

This day has been very long already, but we still had a ways to go before our finally stop for the night. We were itching to get some rest in a building after camping out for a few days, and the general plan was to snake our way north toward Santa Fe, a city I have once visited but we were eager to check out again on this trip. It's known for being the highest elevation capital city in the US, and of course its stucco Pueblo Revival architecture style featuring stucco exteriors, rounded edges, vigas—protruding roof beams—which is highly unique compared to the vast majority of American cities. New Mexico also has a deep native American history, that we would explore in some museums soon. Due to the exorbitant price of AirBnBs in Santa Fe however, we decided to book a place in Albuquerque instead, and we'd make Santa Fe a day trip between our two nights in ABQ.

Yilin helped out with the driving this evening, which I was grateful after a long day including a substantial hike in the morning. Now completely in the dark, which I hate to do on a road trip through a beautiful state, we zoomed north on US-54, running parallel with a freight train for many miles, then passing through Carrizozo where we saw a fox trotting across one of the residential streets. We switched drivers again and headed toward I-25, and after too many hours found ourselves in the vicinity of our AirBnB around 12:30am. This was a gated and pass-coded community that was fairly complicated to navigate since it was all within one address, so my phone directed me to the wrong building 3 times before we realized the host had included a powerpoint document explaining which building to go to and all the entry/parking details that we failed to read. (Sorry to any residents we tried the wrong entry code, thinking it would be our home for the next two nights!)

By 1am we were in the door with our stuff and extremely ready for a good night's sleep, but we needed showers first, at least I did after my extremely sweaty hike up Guadalupe Peak. Stay tuned for my next post with all things Santa Fe!

Day 9 Route map: 537
Total mileage: 3129

2025 Road Trip: Part 8 (Carlsbad Caverns)

Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

Day 8
5.29.25

I woke first on this morning to natural light filtering into our tent window, and my thoughts quickly went to the fact that today, I would finally get a chance to visit Carlsbad Caverns! Also, we would be crossing into Mountain Time at the TX-NM border, so technically we'd get a 25-hour day.

The sky was a perfect blue, and the weather was nice, and I went to the car to get breakfast going, however it wasn't long before I was certain we'd get dumped on with rain within minutes, so we hurried to pack up the tent and what I could of the kitchen. However the darkening sky was merely dark and slightly windy, and no rain came. Nature's fake-out I guess.

Our plan for the day was to get to Carlsbad Caverns for mid-afternoon, walk the tour from the natural entrance, and then attend the bat flight program, which is a short ranger talk right by the cave entrance in a stone amphitheater, after which visitors get a chance to view hundreds to thousands of bats as they exit the cave in search of their nightly bug meals. I had read that this is a remarkable experience and worth visiting the park in the evening to witness, on top of the self-guided cavern tour itself. There is lots of public land around the park in southern NM, so we planned to camp the next night somewhere in the Carlsbad area.

Our trip from Big Spring TX westward brought us through a landscape completely barren of any life except for extensive oil industry. While sections of our route along state highways were beautiful, we were shocked at how flat and empty much of the area was, meanwhile the road was well trafficked with large trucks and what I can assume are workers for the oil businesses around here. We felt a bit out of place as road-trippers here.

Before long, we crossed into New Mexico and into Mountain Time Zone, where we would stay for the majority of our trip. Compared to some others, this welcome sign to the state was not as impressive, but the license plates are definitely some of the nicest designed in the country that I've seen. There are two main styles that have either yellow background with red numbers, or a turquoise background with yellow letters, and we did see a red chili style as well, with a black background, with the slogan "Chili Capital of the World." My other favorite thing about the New Mexico plates are the fact that they specify "New Mexico, USA," perhaps to make it clear to any confused Americans that New Mexico is indeed part of the US, and not part of Mexico? If so, I am disappointed in our education system.

We stopped briefly in Jal, NM and drove a couple miles up the road to see a Cowboy Statue that was marked both on my map and on a green roadside sign. I was curious what we might see, but didn't expect this:

Cowboy Statues, Jal NM

These were much larger than you think, with the horses probably around 10-12' high, though the area was fenced off and we couldn't get too close. From here, we continued on through barren land along Route 128, with certain areas dominated by salty ground that I kept thinking was snow if I didn't use my brain to recall the temperature was in the high 80s. After spotting a very tall anvil cloud over the direction we were supposed to be heading, I checked the weather app, only to find that the cloud was directly over Carlsbad, and potentially dropping rain on that particular spot. The cloud got higher and higher, with strong upper winds blowing it to the east, but never moving.

A large cloud of Carlsbad Caverns

We cut off the corner from downtown Carlsbad, since we planned to go there after our cave tour for dinner, and instead passed through an interesting town called Loving on our way to Whites City, the gateway town for the national park. It turns out the cloud was not dropping heavy rain over the park, though the cloudscape was certainly interesting and dynamic. Perhaps there was rain above that was evaporating before it hit the ground...

Finally at Carlsbad Caverns!

I didn't realize that the main area of the park is actually on a mountaintop, so we had a long winding road to get to the top, and the cavern below is actually within the mountainside, 700 feet below the summit but still above the valley to the southeast. This park has no gatehouse, as the entrance fee applies mostly for the cave tour underground, and since we had arrived too early at Shenandoah on our first day, our stop inside the visitor center would be my chance to get the annual parks pass for the remainder of our trip.

One of many brightly-colored hot rods we saw in the parking lot here, I'm assuming this might be some type of group or car club that travels around different areas, since the license plates were from all over

We got our cave entrance receipt inside the visitor center, and headed the exhibit hall, which features a 3D model of the cave, which gives a slightly better sense of the geometry of the cave, however even still, I think caves are notoriously hard to visualize, since they are voids that twist and turn in 3 dimensions, and once I was eventually on the main path underground, I lost most of my sense of direction. There was a 2D map that showed both the surface features and also where the cave is below that was more helpful to me.

From the exhibit hall, it's a short walk down a path to the cave's natural entrance, where we saw the stone amphitheater where we'd be back in the evening to see the bat flight spectacle. (There is the option to take an elevator to the bottom, near to the big room area, and though we'd be taking this back up afterward, I think it's fun to see the natural entrance, which adds about one more hour to the underground trip.)

Carlsbad Caverns Amphitheater

I'll make my disclaimer now, which is that while photography is completely allowed in the cave, our pictures, and even videos, don't really show how it feels to walk through, and as I look over the pictures we took, it's quite difficult to discern what exactly I'm looking at. You'll see the trail with its railing in some of the photos, which help to give some sense of scale and depth, but walking along the path and seeing features appear around corners is truly the best way to experience it all. The way in past the amphitheater is down many switchbacks as we descend about 700 feet below the surface. Good shoes were recommended for this tour, though I did see one person in flip-flops, and I hope they didn't slip on the wet sections of the path...

The entrance area is inhabited by cave swallows, which we thought were bats at first, but then we realized bats don't make bird sounds, nor do they fly around during the day. The temperature difference as we descended was considerable, as was the increase in weird smells, no doubt from the bird and bat droppings, and the mixture of inside and outside air.

Looking up out of the natural entrance

A bit further down, we got to an area with a flat roof, descending even further down with switchbacks galore.

Just a bit of natural light finding its way in at this point

A big area of flowstone

A tall, but not the largest stalagmite, Yilin for scale

This map was the most helpful to me, and we chose to do the full loop on the right side

Above is a picture from the big room, where at most times you can see to the opposite wall. We thought this hole on the left looked like an eye!

See the pathway above where we came from

Dolls Theater: soda straws and small columns

A small mineral pool with a bit of rainbow colors, likely from bacteria

After about 2.5 hours underground, we had finished the big room loop and returned to the elevator station, where there was an underground gift and snack shop, though it was closed by this time since it was after 4pm. This just seemed so out of place to me, I have no words. Apparently there used to be more development underground years ago, but there were issues with animals getting into food down here, so they had to scale back on the amenities offered at the bottom. There are still restrooms if needed.

Exiting the visitor center and breathing clean air again was so refreshing, after we had grown accustomed to the somewhat stale cave air. The sky was threatening to rain as we got outside, but at least we weren't baking in the sun. Looking east out onto the forever flat land below was so cool, as was seeing the rest of the mountain range out to the right where Guadalupe National Park lay obscured by haze.

As we were looking around, we turned east to discover a rainbow!

We decided to drive up into downtown Carlsbad to get dinner at a Mexican restaurant called El Jimador. It's a bit further than it looks on the map, due to the winding park road, so it's about 40 minutes. We did get some rain on the drive up, but we welcomed that do cool us down a bit.

Yilin wanted to try something unusual on the menu, and went for their Molcajete Jimador - a meal that was served in a sizzling hot molcajete (Mexican version of mortar and pestle), featuring shrimp, chicken, steak, chorizo, onions, salsa, and cactus leaf. It turns out the cactus leaf is extremely sour, at least in the way it was prepared here, but otherwise, her review of the meal was quite good! I ordered Pollo Palapa, a comparatively more tame meal featuring chicken in queso with rice and beans, which I fully enjoyed.

Molcajete Jimador

We were watching the clock as we ate, since we needed to be back to the park around 7pm to get a seat at the amphitheater to watch the bat flight that evening, but we managed to eat what we could and pack some leftovers with us and get back with plenty of time to spare.

Now for the bat flight, I won't be able to show you any photos or footage of the event since any electronics are prohibited since the bats are very sensitive to light and noise. We were required to actually shut our phones off. I will try to describe the experience as best I can. We had a ranger answering some questions from our medium sized audience that night, and he instructed us to wave at him if we started to see any bats emerge from the cave, since he was facing our way. It was a few visitors next to us that spotted the first bats, and from this point he had told us to try and be as still and quiet as we could and just observe. Of course we're allowed to leave at any point, but just to exit quietly. Bats, unlike the cave swallows we saw earlier, must flap at all times to stay airborne, and because of this, the flight pattern is noticeably different, and more fluttery, since they can't glide. The primary bats here are Mexican free-tailed bats, which are much tinier than I expected, only 3-4 inches long, with a wingspan of about a foot. They came out in swarms, circling in front of the entrance to gain altitude before turning off over the mountaintop to look for bugs, primarily moths, to feast on. The ranger told us that they usually fly over toward the Black and Pecos River valleys, their flight distance averaging about 10-25 miles each night. It was quiet enough for us to hear the wings flapping before they disappeared into the sky—certainly one of the more unique experiences we have had.

I don't recall what time the bats started coming out, but we stayed for maybe 30 minutes watching them, before quietly sneaking out to our car. The sky had mostly cleared and we had a view of the crescent moon setting over the mountain.

I had found a nearby car-camping spot not far down the road called Sunset Reef Campground, which has about 10-12 spots for RVs or tent/car-campers, and there were only a few people set up by the time we arrived at 9 or so. The sites had picnic tables with a metal roof over the top which was quite nice, I would come back here if camping in the area.

Starry view from Sunset Reef CG

I had been poking around the map earlier and discovered Guadalupe NP just to the south was home to Texas's highest peak, Guadalupe Peak, and while I know Yilin wouldn't have much interest in doing this hike, I thought it seemed possible for me to give it at go since we were in the area, and she was fine with hanging out at the trailhead in the morning while I hike. The elevation of the summit is 8750', certainly higher than I'm used to on the east coast, but it was time to get back into some bigger hikes with a few thousand feet of elevation gain so my legs don't go soft sitting in a car for days on end. I was planning to get up predawn so as not to waste the whole next day. I'll save this adventure for the next post, and for now, leave you with our route map from Day 8.

Day 8 Route map: 274
Total mileage: 2592