park hoppin
march 27 - april 3 - hueco tanks, carlsbad caverns, big bend
Lots to catch up on! at the end of march we spent a week exploring three state and national parks.
first we checked out Hueco Tanks state park in texas - we didn’t really know what it was, except that Paloma’s coworker said we had to go. turns out it is a beautiful desert oasis! “hueco” is spanish for hollow, and the rocks here have “huecos” that hold water. this attracted people and animals early on, and you can see the pictographs from ancient visitors on some of the rock faces. the rock faces here are also pockmarked with holes, and it is a world-class destination for bouldering - we saw several groups out with their crash pads. most of the park is only accessible via guided tour, but we had fun hiking and climbing around on the North Mountain.
Carlsbad caverns was next, in southern new mexico. that was a really incredible experience. It’s hard to capture with pictures, but if I had to pick one thing from our trip so far to recommend seeing for yourself, it would be this cave. the largest part of the cave, called “the big room”, is about 750 feet underground and over 8 acres. the whole cave itself is over 30 miles long. we hiked down from the natural entrance and spent about 4 hours walking the cave, and exited via elevator (which you can also enter from). but the most spectacular part about it isn’t the size, it’s the formations. if anyone is familiar with making drip castles at the beach, it’s like earth making drip castles over millions of years. it’s cool hearing the drip-drops of the water knowing that the cave continues to be forming, and seeing stalagmites and stalactites slowly reaching toward each other. We also learned about how a 16 year old boy named Jim White discovered the cave in 1898 while looking for cattle. he saw a cloud of what looked like black smoke, but was actually millions of bats leaving the mouth of the cave. we heard all about how he came back and descended the cave with rope and a kerosene lamp, became fascinated with the cave and spent the rest of his life exploring it. but apparently, he also had a friend who helped explore and map the cave! an unnamed “Mexican friend” who was totally left out of the story we heard - we didn’t learn this until researching the caves discovery. lame! here’s an article that goes into this a bit more.
Then we went to big bend national park! the most vast and magnificent park yet. it was super worth the out of the way journey to spend time here. the “backcountry camping” was rustic (basically a patch of desert off a bumpy dirt road), but the peace and quiet was awesome. we did a great hike into Santa Elena canyon and waded across the Rio Grande into Mexico. apparently DHS wants to build a border wall here which is crazy and dumb and we saw lots of posters and signs saying “no big bend wall”. anyways, a highlight of the park was the natural hot spring on the edge of the rio grande - we had the full spectrum of hot, warm, and cold water available with a beautiful view. that was hard to leave! they also had a fascinating outdoor dinosaur exhibit with a variety of fossils found in the park, a geological timeline of the area, and a model of the biggest flying dinosaur ever discovered. our stay was complete when we finally saw some javelinas! they are super cute pig-looking guys that live all over the desert.
more on texas coming soon!
