Southwestern Turkey. Yeehaw!

I am writing this just about a year later! Although thanks to the pandemic in 2020 feels like three years ago now. However, I still can recall all the great moments from this trip and pictures definitely help. Thanksgiving falls around my husband's (also got married in a tiny wedding in 2020...wild) birthday. Usually it is very expensive for me to fly home during that time so we either drive to Upstate NY to see his family or we go on a trip! Three years ago we went to Cuyahoga National Park (one of the smallest National Parks in United States), but in 2019 we planned to visit multiple National Parks so we settled on a Southwestern Road Trip.

We flew into El Paso, TX because it was I think the best place to get a rental car and a flight from Washington D.C., and I have always been curious about El Paso and wanted some good food and be able to see Juarez, Mexico from afar!

Our first stop was White Sands National Park, which at the time was just White Sands National Monument but our stamp stills counts! It became a National Park, a few weeks after when Congress passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act on December 2019. It was a warmer than usual day and it was fun watching families take turns sliding down the sand dunes. I love this picture of Colby, it looks so vast and endless from some angles. The sand was cool, still yet to be warmed by the unfamiliar sunshine at the end of November.

We spent a couple of hours here before heading home to El Paso. Oh also if you are coming from El Paso, don't do what we did and go through the White Sands Missile Range. Google Maps let us the wrong way. You technically can arrive at White Sands this way but you need to have government clearance...which we clearly don't. However it was interesting, I guess to pass through here?

Carlsbad Caverns

The next day we went to Carlsbad Caverns. Our original plan was to go to Guadalupe National Park first but there was SO much wind that we decided it was probably best to go below ground. We have been to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky and Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, so Carlsbad Caverns was our last National Park cave! What was unique about this one compared to the others, was you did not need a Park Ranger to guide you since the cave is very accessible. I think we hiked a few miles ourselves through this limestone cave. I was awed by the size of some of these massive stalactites, and how some of them even joined together from the floor and ceiling!

Guadalupe National Park

After an okay night's sleep...in basically a trailer lol, (we last minute decided to stay in Carlsbad versus driving back to El Paso). It did the job, a clean place to sleep and it even had HBO. We had a 5am wakeup call anyways because Colby saw there would be storm forming in the later afternoon, and you do not want to be caught at the top of a mountain during a thunderstorm. At 6am we started our ascend to Texas's highest point Guadalupe's Peak at 8,749 ft.

I loved seeing all the cacti and its fruit!

The hike was very windy but the elevation was gradual and I don't remember the hike being very strenuous. I looked back at our All Trail's app and it looks like we finished it in 4.5 hours with an average pace of 30 minutes which resulted in 8.6 miles. So I guess it was kind of hard since an easy hike, we usually pace around 22 minutes a mile in Shenandoah (our National backyard park for training). But we did it! As you can tell from my layers, it was pretty cold and windy at the top.I also remember Colby being very sunburned (but that isn't new lol).

Oh! Almost forgot to mention, I had probably the BEST CONSOME in a WHILE in Carlsbad, NM. It transported me to some childhood memory deeply wedged or buried inside me that reminded me how my country of origin, Mexico. It felt cathartic to say the least when the warm umami broth touched my lips. I think my grandmother on my father's side used to make me soups like this when I was a child.

Anyways, thanks for sticking around and seeing our great Southwestern National Park trip! Till next time!