Guadalupe Mountains National Park

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Ever heard of the Guadalupe Mountains? I'd wager not. I hadn't.

A little to the left, Jordan... perfect!

They aren't big, at least compared to other mountains we've seen. They aren't pretty. They are honestly fairly plain. So what's the big deal?

Apparently they are an ancient coral reef that has been uplifted. I say "apparently" because we never actually got onto the mountains to confirm that. This is one of the rare parks with no scenic drive. It's basically a handful of parking lots off the road and a whole bunch of hiking trails.

We screwed up our schedule a bit and didn't have a weekend to do this park. So we planned a Thursday afternoon visit with an option for Friday afternoon.

On Thursday, we picked a 2.5 mile round trip to a spring and back (note that we're in the desert, so springs are a valid sightseeing destination). Since we're after the time change now, it got dark around 5, so that's all we had time to do. One thing we've learned about the desert is that it can be beautiful during the day and then quickly drop 30 degrees when the sun goes down, so we hustled home once it got dark.


We declined our option for Friday. The kids weren't excited about any of the other hikes of reasonable distance, and neither were Julie and I. We've done a lot of walking through desert scrub over the past two months, and none of us were chomping at the bit to do more!
Location: Guadalupe Peak, Texas 79847, USA

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