Day 8: January 23, Whites City, NM to Alpine, TX

First day with no snow!  That being said, we now believe the tourist boards for AZ, NM and TX lie when they say their states are hot.  In fact, Catherine saw the signs for I10 today and thought about heading back west to warm and sunny SoCal.

This morning we were the first ones out of the hotel in Whites City.

This isn’t trick photography.   We were also the last ones out of the hotel.  We quickly spotted the first wildlife of the day:

After passing the no services 130 mile sign and being thankful Catherine filled up with gas the night before, we headed out.  As per usual, we stopped alongside the road for a mountain photo-op.  These are the Guadalupe Mountains (250 million years ago these were under the ocean and are now have tons of mostly tiny fossils if you know where to look) and the sheer cliff at the left is El Capitan (you know you’ve been to too many parks when you realize names get reused).  As far as we can tell, all of Texas is divided into enormous ranches that have a few cows or horses (always bunched) and that’s what’s in the foreground.

Driving into the lot for McKittric Canyon in Guadalupe National Park, there were a lot of spots, and one ranger truck (the first potential license tag of the day).  We talked with the ranger for a minute (a geology student at UTEP) and then headed up the canyon.  On white gravel.  Gravel in the stream bed or rocks on the trail make sense, but why in the world did they haul in GRAVEL? 

We birded along the 4 miles or so to the Grotto and found a pair of Rufous Crowed Sparrows (new species for us), a huge number of Spotted Towhees, a few Albert’s Towhees, some Hermit Thrushes, a flock of Juncos, a couple of Mockingbirds, a Bewick’s Wren, and, on the way back, a juvenile Verdin (new species for us) and a Sparrow Hawk.   Here is the group of soaptree yuccas that contained the Bewick’s wren. 

The canyon is relatively lush – a few actual trees including the Mandron which looks like it has a sunburn with its red bark peeling off to reveal white underneath (kind of like a sycamore).  However, just a bit away from the base of the canyon, is all desert.  Truly uninviting yucca and cactus infested desert.  Here’s a close up of a yucca.

See the impressions on the leaves?  That’s because the leaves start out pressed together and it pokes itself with its thorns.

We stopped to let Catherine practice her rock climbing skills (she is about 2 feet off the ground) and then Denise got worried Catherine would fall and break something.

You see that Catherine is wearing 3 mismatching layers?  She just pulled her black bank robber hood off for the photo shoot.  It was cold. 

After about 4 miles (and as the sun finally started to come out) we started the 2000 foot ascent to the Notch.  We got about halfway up and then decided we had better things to do that climb through the Chihuahuan desert.  It was a pretty view back down the canyon though.

And, yes, Deborah, every photo posted here was taken by Denise or Catherine.  No internet cheating. :-).

On the way back, we stopped at the Grotto -- a small almost cave complete with stalactites and stalagmites.  Hey, Catherine learned to spell those words since yesterday.

About a tenth of a mile later was the old hunting cabin.

Apparently there are elk in these mountains and we also saw 6 mule deer including one buck (but he didn't have an impressive rack).  We stopped by the creek and saw the rainbow trout which can reproduce in the river.  No fishing allowed though, sorry Tom Ward.

The old hunting cabin is about a mile or two from the Pratt house.  The Pratts bought a small ranch (about 8000 acres) in the 1920s because it was the most beautiful canyon in the world (either they hadn't seen much of the world or we have a different definition of beauty).  They got the depression era cowboys to haul slate up to make the house.  There is electricity and those new fangled mercury light bulbs in the house, so it must still be used occasionally.  Mr. Pratt donated much of his land to start the National Park about 50 years ago.  We hope he continued to make use of it until he died in 1981, but maybe his kids make use of the cabin.  Yep, Catherine is nosy.  But we all knew that.

We headed out of the park back over a couple of miles of gravel (total trip 9 mile and about 12-1500 feet of elevation gain).  No one was in the parking lot.  In fact, we saw one guy who headed in and out to the Grotto and knew we were from CA as that was the only car in the lot.  He was driving cross country the other way.

We were passed in the car for the first time on the way from the trail to the visitor's center.  About 2 miles later, that car had been pulled by Mike the TEXAS state trooper (we crossed the border this morning).  How did we know his name was Mike?  We stopped at the visitor center (where we immediately spotted a male Phainopepla) where there were 2 rangers including the college kid from earlier in the day.  They were bored silly (they thought 100 visitors h(ad come through during the day).  We chatted for a few minutes -- they laughed that Mike who is very friendly unless he pulls you got someone.  We discussed binoculars and condors eating dumb tourists.  

We walked the short nature trail where they actually have signs for about 20-30 plants including their names and a paragraph about them.  At the end of the trail is ruins of The Pinery.  This was the highest stop (about 3700 feet) on the Butterfields Stage route.  In the 1880s, you could mail a letter in St. Louis and it was guaranteed to arrive in San Fransisco in no more than 25 days.  That's a distance of 2700 miles (they dropped south to avoid the Rockies).  Drives and horses switched off periodically so that the 12,000 pieces of mail and up to 6 passengers could bump along at 5 miles per hour day and night.  Then we headed out (speed limit 75) and south Texas road 54.

Texas is boring.  Catherine had no idea how boring Texas is.  The flash flooding signs provided entertainment.

It got dark as we went under I10 in Van Horn (we switched from 54S to 90E) and we still had 100 miles to go -- there are no hotels and there may have been 1 gas station between Van Horn and Alpine.  In fact there were 2 towns (217 and 2000 some odd people) and one crossroads. 

One would have thought that there would be nothing to say about driving 100 miles at night.  Instead we say 4 trains (those lights are bright).  We saw what appeared to be emergency lights ahead of us.  Then after 5 minutes we decided they must be moving or something.  Then we thought they were some sort of billboard.  Catherine kept trying to slow down because they had to be getting closer.  After 15 minutes (at 60 mph) we finally found every state trooper for 3 counties at the scene of a double tractor trailer wreck.  How this happened when you pass one car every 5 minutes is beyond us.  Denise theorizes someone fell asleep.

The distances you can see in Texas are truly amazing.  There is some sort of big circular thing (if you look at it on google maps, there is a blimp in the picture that looks like a missile) in Ryan (the crossroads).  You can see the lights for no fewer than 7 miles coming up to it.

We decided we would quickly start seeing aliens out here.  For those of you wondering, we decided to skip the 1.5 hour drive to Roswell yesterday so we could do Carlsbad that afternoon.  The one museum showing rubber aliens and B-grade movies didn’t quite make the grade.  However, we did pass the Marfa lights.  Marfa is a tiny town in Texas with a platform where you can often see ghostly lights for a fee (though the Hampton Inn where we are staying gave us free tickets).  According to Wikipedia, the lights are headlights from 67, about 9 miles away.  But paranormal activity is more fun.

Alpine, TX has a McDonalds, Subway and Sul Ross University, part of the University of Texas system.  Here, you can major in rodeo.  It also has a lovely Hampton in where we are staying in style.  Probably no internet and maybe no cell phone for the next few days in Big Bend.  Signing off -- for the first time in the Central Time Zone!