State(s): Texas
Link: https://www.nps.gov/gumo/index.htm
Days: 2
Month: December
Hotel: White’s City Cavern Inn
Hikes: 5 = 12.9 miles
National Park Visit Order: #18
Ice Cream: Dairy Mart, Baskin-Robbins
For this trip, we explored Big Bend National Park, Rio Grande Wild & Scenic River, Fort Davis National Historic Site, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and White Sands National Park. We made several other stops along the way too!
Day 0
We continued our journey from Fort Davis National Historic Site. We saw an ice cream shop while driving through Pecos, TX called Dairy Mart. Quickly ate our ice cream and continued on our drive.
Once close to our next hotel, we stopped at El Charro in Carlsbad, NM for dinner. We started with chips and queso. I had quesoberria tacos and Colleen had chicken tacos. They also had a salsa bar with several different salsas. The food was amazing!
We checked in to our hotel for the next few nights – Whites City Cavern Inn.
Day 1
We started our day heading to Devil’s Hall Trail, a 4.2 mile moderate hike. The trailhead parking at Pine Springs was full at 7:44am. We had to park at the visitor center and walk over through the campground. Search and rescue crew was at the trailhead giving everyone a safety briefing. This was a very fun hike. There was a lot of rock scrambling along the way, additionally there was a general direction of following the wash, but the path wasn’t marked leading to a greater sense of adventure. Toward the end of the hike there’s a large wall you have to climb up – going up was fairly easy. Coming back down was a bit more challenging for some people. Going up, we climbed the wall on the right. Going down we also went to the right (opposite side though since we were going the other direction). Sticking to the wall at the right on the way down ended up not being as difficult as it appeared. There was shade the whole time except some of of the way back. Overall, it took us 3 hours from the visitor center parking out to Devil’s Hall and back. There are bathrooms at the campground on the way back to the car. This ended up being our favorite hike of the trip.
We headed to Pine Springs Visitor Center. While there, we heard a story about a ranger the previous day before finishing a 30 hour rescue for someone hiking Guadalupe Peek. A lot of people underestimate the difficulty.
We quickly completed the Pinery Trail, 0.7 mile easy trail. It was paved and had lots of growth.
Originally we planned on hiking more here, but there was a big snow storm coming over night. The next day we were planning a full day at Carlsbad Caverns National Park but with the storm coming, we ended up heading to the caves to try and move our reservations (we failed), shop the store, and hike a couple trails in case we were iced in the next day. Read more about that on the Carlsbad Caverns National Park page.
Day 2
Two days later – we woke up to a freezing fog advisory. Another interesting thing we never experienced before. The car windows had a little bit of ice on them and we didn’t have an easy way to get it off the windows, so we waited for the car to warm up and melt the ice.
As we were heading to the McKittrick Canyon Area, we saw a fox run across the highway.
Our fist hike was to Pratt Cabin Trail, a 4.8 mile moderate out and back hike. It was a very cool trail. There was some minor rock scrambling and 2 flowing water streams (a lot more water than normal due to melting snow) we had to cross. On our way out, there was ice along the trail. Once we made it to Pratt Lodge, we saw one of the search and rescue workers and talked with him for a minute. We sat on the back porch to enjoy the view for a few minutes while eating a quick snack. It was very peaceful. On our way back almost all of the snow and ice on the trail were melted. This was a fun hike.
Next up was the McKittrick Nature Trail, a 0.9 mile easy lollipop trail. It ended up not being that fun – I’d stay away from this trail until it gets cleaned up. It was very overgrown so we were constantly dodging cactus and other plants. I ended up with a couple bloody areas from them. We did not enjoy this trail because we spent the entire time dodging prickly plants.
Then we stopped at the McKittrick Visitor Center for a stamp and to use the restroom.
Our next hike was the Smith Spring Trail Loop, a 2.3 mile easy-moderate loop. This loop started at the Frijole Ranch Trailhead, then looped around to the Frijole Ranch Museum, Manzanita Spring, and the Smith Spring. The Manzanita Spring had a lot of water. The part going to the Smith Spring was mostly sun. Once there the spring had a lot of flowing water. There was a nice area to sit at the spring in the shade.
Then we headed to the El Capitan Viewpoint.
Then we went to Guadalupe Mountain Brewing Company for dinner. We had a pretzel with cheese and a veggie pizza. Great food all around.
We tried to find some ice cream but struggled to find something open. Although it’s a national chain (we try to avoid chains), we haven’t been there in several years so we opted to go to Baskin-Robbins for some ice cream.
Day 3
The next morning, we started our journey to White Sands National Park, making a few stops along the way.
