Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM
This was at the main entrance to the self guided tour of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. A great sign of a safe hike.
While Carlsbad Caverns National Park is actually 119 caves, this is the natural entrance to the 'show' cave that is considered the main attraction of the park. This entrance is where the bats fly out in the summer, but will take you 75 stories underground to 'The Big Room' about 2 miles down the trail.
A small section of the 'The Big Room'
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX
We got the last campsite when we rolled in, but still found a great sunrise in the morning.
Setting out in the early morning light to try and summit Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,751 ft.
Kin-Ling on top of Texas!
Carlsbad Caverns National Park ranger guided tour of King's Palace.
The King's Palace at Carlsbad Caverns National Park
White Sands National Park, NM
White Sands National Park was our take on a White Christmas for 2019!
Kin-Ling has little patience for my photo experiments.
and is really happy to be done with them!
Hiking the Alkali Flat trail.
If you have heard of White Sands, it is usually a missile test site. Sometimes you cannot get to the park because the highway is closed for missile tests.
That's gypsum sand, not snow!
Las Cruces, NM and the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, NM
I think we got these photos above on our way up to Truth or Consequences, NM which had some amazing river side hot springs. You can run 30 feet and go right from your 104 degree pool to whatever temperature the Rio Grande happens to be at.
Somewhere off I-10 in Arizona.
We saw these crazy looking storms off to the south where we were about to drive!
We were really happy to get back to a paved road after Kin-Ling's expert googling took us over a muddy mountain pass with no rear suspension (thank you 12 boxes of textbooks!). On the way, we did not take the next turn google wanted because a gate was padlocked which was probably lucky because we had already passed by one car stuck in a ditch
Chiricahua National Park, AZ
This national monument used to be called the "Wonderland of Rocks" as a tourist destination.
Echo Park looks like a crazy wind storm had torn up all the trees, but was home to a cute woodpeckers.
Kin-Ling's next yearbook photo.
The Echo Canyon Grotto
It was crazy to see the drastic difference between where we were and the distance flatter landscape.
A view from the Heart of Rocks loop
Saguaro National Park, AZ
Saguaro is pronounced sa-WAH-roh. The park is named for the giant cacti.
If a cactus is as tall as you, you are about the same sage. These cacti can live to 200 years old
We went hiking in the desert on a rainy day and were treated to a number of small waterfalls. My memory is that we were hiking up to a tank, but this was definitely not a tank.
Another waterfall. We almost thought this was the entire hike.
No matter what Brian says. This is him destroying federally protected private land.
The park is broken up into two areas about 40 miles a part - Rincon Mountain District (East) and Tucson Mountain District (West). The photos below are from the Tucson Mountain District.
You probably can't tell, but this is taken from about 50 miles from the photos above in Saguaro National Park west
The colored dirt is from the closed Gould Mine which was used for copper.
