We woke up to blue skies at our corral site. Took care of morning duties and rolled back down the road towards the Guadalupe Mountain NP visitor center. We had never heard of this park and were excited to see what we’d find. Of course we had to take our family photo at the park sign.
We entered the visitor center, collected our Jr. Ranger packets, and got directions to the nearest “child friendly” hike. It happened to be right outside the visitor center and was called the campground trail, for good reason. It was a very short trail that led up to the campground that had no vacancy for us the day before. It was a nice hike and had both flora and fauna that had us feeling back at home in AZ.
After our hike, we went back to the van for some parking lot lunch and then back to the visitor center to complete the packets and exchange them for some badges. The visitor center wasn’t large but it did have a very large display that included lots of plants, animals, and geological data and samples from the area. We were all surprised to learn of the bird that kills it’s prey by dropping it onto cacti and/or barbed wire, very creative brutality. From this park, our next destination was the only other National Park in Texas, Big Bend National Park. But since it was too far of a drive for what we had left of the day, we found a unique place on the way and posted up there for the night. It was a beautiful area near Elephant Mountain and was setup for hunting parties. There were several spots with picnic tables and shade covers, complete with hooks for cleaning animals that may have been “collected”. We were happy to find ourselves alone for the night except for the deer that we had seen on our way in and the possible bears that we didn’t see but that are in the area.
