"Out in the West Texas town of El Paso..."

On a whim Darrin and I decided to visit the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which is near El Paso, in the way that anything in Texas is near anything else. (Its like, more than 100 miles away.)


Everyone thinks Texas is flat, but there are a few mountains here. The highest peak in Texas is in this park; its over 8000 feet.



The park is in the Chihuahuan desert, which has a unique collection of yuccas, prickly pears, chollas, little runty oaks, and other types of vegetation. The flower stalk of the yucca on the right grows an amazing 5-6 inches a day.



The hike we did took us up a canyon to a permanent spring, one of the few sources of water in the park.


Here we are looking back down across the valley at more typical Texas terrain. (flat!) The funny little hill in the distance is called nipple mountain, for fairly obvious reasons.


Click me to see where we went.