The Devil's Hall

Before we departed Guadalupe Mountains National Park after 3 nights of camping, we decided one more hike.  We elected to head west from campground up the canyon below Guadalupe Peak to the "Devil's Hall", supposedly a limestone slot canyon.  Really?  Let's go see..  All photos are with iPhone.

Sunrise over campground

 Where these names are derived is baffling to me.  In Death Valley there is "Devil's Golf Course".  Maybe the Devil comes to his hall here to lick his wounds after shooting 20 over par like the rest of us.

Yucca Flower

 We stop and look at this interesting yucca plant flower blooming  BIG

Yucca Flower again

 Pretty open in bottom of canyon.  It gets narrower and narrower

Up the canyon we go

 One mile into the hike we are not hiking up the river bed for next 1.1 miles.  

River Bed 

 Lots of bouldering here.  Glad we brought our hiking poles.  Saw lots of people on trail.  few with poles.  We will be sore but not as sore as they will be.

interesting flower growing out of river rock

 Looking up at peaks above.  We are hiking at roughly 5900 ft elevation up to 6700 ft

North Canyon Wall

 Now you don't see trees like this very often.

Alligator Juniper in perfect gymnast split position

 We keep walking.  Cairns were set up to note the path through the river bed. Giant boulders had to be gone around.

More river Bed

 Lots of these lizards and butterflies.  A few birds

Cute lizard.  we saw many

 We turn back 180 degrees up the canyon and think we are at our destination when we see this cool limestone wall.

Wow.  Cool limestone wall here.

 We decide to keep going.  Not sure how much further trail goes.  Let's find out.

Still going

WOW.  The Devil's Hall.  Limestone Slot Canyon.

Devil's Hall

 At the other end of canyon is this.  Whew.  Now we can say we hike to the end of the trail.

End of Trail

 Looking back we see the canyon again.

looking back on Devil's Hall

 We enjoy the moment,  look at the time and decide to head back down.  We made good time, about half of the trip up.  Tired and satisfied we are ready to begin our northern migration

Returning to campground below

So we end our Texas experience and head towards points north.  Stay tuned

Spring has Sprung with Springs and Flowers

When we first began this hike around a loop called "Smith Springs Trail",  I had no idea we would see any wildflowers.

The amazing fact is that we saw 25 different species.

Really, you ask?  Yes, I counted them up when reviewing my photos. Never saw this variety in the sierra foothill where we used to live and hike.

Shooting the Flowers

The loop is about 2.5 miles long heading out from Frijole ranch to see 2 different springs.  These springs were important to the Mescalaro Apache who lived in the area and, later, the settlers and cavalry who participated in their genocide.

The first spring, Manzanita is an open pool created by a small dam.

Manzanita Spring

Large enough to put a canoe on for show and grazing, it was then channeled to the farmhouse and nearby truck gardens whose vegetables ended up on people's tables in El Paso.

We walked north then up this wash towards the mountains, eventually arriving at Smith Springs, about 400 ft higher than the first spring.

Smith Spring

Pretty amazing difference in setting, huh?

Smith Spring surrounded by maple and oak

Surrounded by maple, oak, juniper and other trees, this spring was simply "gorgeous" as Sraddha would say.

Speaking of Sraddha, it's amazing she almost ate this Rockburger.....

The famous "Rockburger"

 The whole Guadalupe Mountain range was a former undersea reef about 250 million years ago.  Much of the rocks show off all kinds of fossils and shapes.  Amazing shapes.

Little "Banzai" plant growing out of a big boulder.  This was about 6 inches wide (iphone photo)

We circled around and back down to the ranch site where our car was parked and headed home for some dinner of leftovers.  Sorry no philosophy today.  Pooped.

Watching the sun set on the mountains at Pine Springs Campground

Wild Flowers

We sure hit the jackpot on wildflowers as shown here in the photos.  All of these photos were not shot with a Macro lens but they have been cropped, some considerably, due to their tiny size.  I won't bore you with photos of all of the flowers because I don't know their names.  Those with captions, we were able to figure out, sorta.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

We are off to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  Where in the world is that you ask?  SE New Mexico south of Carlsbad Caverns.  And it is a national park so I get the stamp!! Woo hoo.  

Our Rouge from Silver City to Guadalupe Mountains by way of El Paso, Texas

Long trip today.  Will stop in Las Cruces near New Mexico State University to purchase some suppies from a natural foods market (Toucan market), then back on freeway to a Flying J for fuel just before we cross the texas border through El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.  Then 130 miles east into the mountains.  The only RV campsite it a parking lot near visitor center on south side.  80 miles of hiking trails and I have a sore heel.  Maybe I can bike there.

from the Park website

I guess the area is really beautiful  and really really isolated.  Our kind of place.  Hope to see the Blood moon in a couple days.

Looking at the highest point in Texas, 8746 ft.  We behind that top right point

The campsite is in the parking lot.  No hookups but great views and only $4 per day.

Our campsite  nestled in amongst other RV's. 

We have some new interior decorations.  Sraddha got an early birthday present.

Our new painting.  An original purchased in Silver City.  Fits on wall next to Fridge with our Suaguaro NP poster.

 We get set up in camp, go to visitor center and find that the Frijole ranch is still open for another half hour so we zoom over there to take a look at the first homestead in the area.

Frijole cabin

The winds are really blowing at 40 mph with some higher gusts. We decide to go for a 2.5 miles hike

View from Smith Spring Trail looking east to Midland, Texas

What began as a little 1/4 mile walk out to see Manzanita Spring, turned into 2.5 mile loop with incredible wildflowers.  more on that next post

Manzanita spring

The flowers and rocks are amazing.  This whole mountains were once a coral reef in a Permian sea, 250 MILLION years ago so the rocks are very different as you can see.

Hamburger sandwich anyone?  That is a rock

I come back last night and find this photo in my email from Dr. Peter taken during the last board meeting I attended at the clinic last October on our way south for winter.

It's supposed to be REAL windy here today with gusts up to 70 mph so we delaying our hiking in high country are bringing in the slides, leaving the RV here and going to Carlsbad caverns for the day.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles...(and a ferry)!

We are in Arizona at present and I behind in posting. Was speaking today with a good friend who reads this blog and he mentioned that, while all the photos are wonderful he was wondering where were the trains?  I reflected on this and realized I haven't posted any train shots either of real trains or of model trains during this trip.  Mostly because I haven't been photographing trains on this trip.

I have driven 2/3 the way across USA in motorhome,  thousands of miles in the jeep, flown in airplanes from Corpus Christi through Dallas to Sacramento and back.  Not one train pic.  My main excuse is that most of the time I was driving when the big trains passed by but really it hasn't been a focus.

Until we reached Houston which was the major reason to visit the area, well, possible birds along the beach areas, but you already knew that.

Morning Fog at Bolivar Ferry Terminal

Anyway, I met up early one morning with a friend, Rich, who lives in the Houston area.  I departed the RV about 6 AM in deep dark coastal fog.  About 35 minute drive to the Bolivar ferry which connects with Galveston.  30 minute ferry ride and I snapped this photo as we departed the dock.  Morning fog and the lights made it very eery.

UP Hump yard

We met on south side of Houston near his home and as we drove north to the railroad area, the sun burned off the haze.  We toured an engine maintenance facility and headed up to the main hump yard where inbound freight cars are sorted or classified into trains bound for new destinations.  4 engines were moving a string of cars over the back end. One was a plug with no cab.  Of interest is there is no engineer riding on train.  They copy model railroaders and run it remote control from the tower.

Mainline North South.  This train headed south

The track underneath is actually a north-south track running up Atlanta and south into Mexico.  This intersection used to be a bottleneck back in the 90's during the merger of the Union Pacific RR with the Southern Pacific RR.  Then more track was laid to smooth out interchange of trains and cars.  We saw about 4-5 trains per hour going through this area in all directions.  What a busy intersection.





Next step was a model railroad where we spent the afternoon running tiny trains.  Gordon Briggs has built a beautiful model of the old ATSF, or Santa Fe line between Los Angeles and Chicago.  His era is 1953 where the passenger train was king and trucks and airplanes were still mostly localized.  His scenery is very close model to the real thing in northern Arizona and Midwest.  I spent the afternoon running trains in his Winslow, Arizona yard while mainline trains zoomed by.  What fun.  Below are a couple photos I shot with iPhone and here is a link to a 4 minute video I posted on You Tube

Long day but fun.  Got my railroad fix for the trip.

Santa Fe Freights

El Capitan Eastbound across Arizona

Help, Blood on the Curtain(s)

Got your attention?
We pulled into High Island, north of Galveston after a long day driving, the last 4 hours through Galveston and waiting for the ferry across to Bolivar Peninsula.  The RV park is nice with one major issue.

MOSQUITOES!!  Ugh.  Sraddha was eaten up while outside hooking up the electrical and water.  We drove around a little to recon the area where there are several bird sanctuaries.  High Island is so named because it is actually higher (by 40 feet) than the coastline.  Lots of forests and swamp land.  Duh!

After our dinner, I started to review the photos from yesterday and today when we noticed that mosquitoes were all over the inside of the RV.  Yikes,  get out the fly swatter and, wack,  oops. I smashed one on the curtain and blood spurted out.  Sigh.  Get the carpet cleaner out and Sraddha spent several minutes cleaning.  Whew.  Then more.  We had left all the windows open to help cool off interior but had closed up the screens. Or so we thought.

Now I believe in non violence, in most situations, however this was self defense!  They were everywhere.  Reminded me a little of that old Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds". They just kept coming out of the woodwork.  Sraddha is especially susceptible to bites. I am less.  We closed all the windows tight and turned on the AC (for the first time since last August).  Still the mosquitoes appeared.  We found one of the windows not totally closed.

Well, we spent the better part of an hour removing the mosquitoes. I finally reviewed yesterdays photos and found 3 worth showing you out of 150.  Some birds seen late in the day.  Really cute.  Not great photos, but these birds all showed their personality.

Roseated Spoonbill yawning.

Nashville Warbler

Ruby Crowned Kinglet.  He really moves around fast.