Unfortunately, the campgrounds nearest El Capitan were packed with other tenters who hadn't been driving all day to get there (?), as it was about 6pm Mountain Time when we got to the first campgrounds, called "The Pinery". We'd been driving 8 hours, and I was tempted to pitch our tent in the parking lot of the closed Visitor's Information station out there. We'd packed along more than 8 gallons of water, not knowing what to expect out there in the way of accomodations. So we drove north into New Mexico and got a campsite in the skankiest campgrounds I've ever had to stay at, the Best Western, Inc.-run White's City, NM motel and campgrounds on US 62/ Tx 180, which is 7 miles from Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Believe me, try not to stay at White's City. There were bugs all over the gross bathroom and they charged us $17.50 plus tax to pitch a tent in dirt and have a view of a scary-looking electrical powerstation there.

So we camped in this hellatious (sic?) campsite Sat. night, and got up as early as possible to get the hell out of there. Despite my girlfriend saying stuff like "I'm not much of a spelunker..." we drove up to Carlsbad Caverns and paid $5 each to walk down into the Caverns Natural Entrance (as opposed to a 75 story elevators) along approx. 5 miles of well-designed walkways into and through the largest limestone room in the entire Western hemisphere! The Caverns were amazing! I'd recommend them to anyone! Parts of the Caverns are wheelchair accessible, and the whole experience was astounding. One of the largest populations of Mexican Freetail bats (like the guys under the Cognress Ave. bridge in Austin, which is the largest URBAN bat population in the world) is in one of the caves closest to the surface. There's 40 ft. deep guano deposits in those parts of the caves! Kathy and I were amazed to see rock formations resembling an Angel (which one person said looked more like Hades himself!) and a gargoyle right next to one another, and rock formations resembling just about every natural shape one can imagine, much of the bemusement of some of the elderly ladies who were down there at the same time as us!

So after a few hours of following footpaths through the Caverns, we resurfaced via the huge elevators and bailed for the direction of the Dog Canyon, Tx campsites in the Guadalupe Mts. Nat'l Park, which is approached along a highway that winds through the Lincoln Nat'l Forest through some amazingly desolate but beautiful New Mexican high country, through the El Paso Gap, back down to the Texas border. Along this highway, we were diverted to the Sitting Bull Falls, which was down in the canyons north of the entrance to the Lincoln forest, where we got our feet wet and watched a bunch of kids jump into the pristine pools of the falls, and talked to a ranger about why the falls are called Sitting Bull Falls. I thought that one of the rocks above the falls had the look of a bull siting, but actually the falls were named that because the white Ranchers who were chasing after a bunch of Apaches who'd stolen horses from them up the valley, and when they camped at the falls, their Guide, an Indian, believed to have been visited by the Prophet Sitting Bull during the night.

We left the falls, because we needed to reach the campsite at Dog Canyon and get a space. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, and the weather was clear and beautiful, but pretty windy. The drive to Dog Canyon was among the most beautiful roads I've ever seen! The cactus and yucca filled, arid cattle plains became golden with tall grasses, and as we got higher in the Guadalupe Mts. trees became taller, and in the distance you could see that along the tops of the mountains there were pine forests like what you'd expect to see in Colorado, hundreds of miles (of desert) to the north! We could see hawks, buzzards, deer, huge jackrabbits, horses, mules, and a wild assortment of reptiles, smaller birds, and little mountain animals like the Ringtailed cat (which my girlfriend says we saw, but the thing she was calling a ringtail looked to me like some kind of huge possum) and we even saw an Elk footprint! The Ranger at Dog Canyon was a very nice person, and I spent about a half-hour with him after we arrived and found that, due to its remoteness, there was plenty of space for us to camp! Carlsbad was 71 miles away, and the next closest city was El Paso, Tx, which was about 100 miles away through the Badlands of New Mexico. Turns out there was a bathroom and water up there though, so we didn't need as much water as we'd brought with us, but no showers. So Sunday, after seeing the Caverns, the waterfall, and experiencing one of the best drives ever, we hiked up into the Guadalupe Mts. along the Bush Mountail Trail, which goes for about 13 miles along the western peaks of the park, but we managed to climb up to around 7000 ft. above sea level.

The wind on the hillside was intense, and our footsteps were heavy when climbing up through the yellow grasses and the rocky trail. The Ranger had said that the day before a bear had been seen up in the Park, but that if we saw one he'd run from us. He also said to watch out for rattlesnakes in the high grass, and that there were scorpions and centipedes to look out for as well. Being sort of absent-minded, I forgot to pack anything to wear other than shorts and t-shirts, and my tennis shoes, but fortunately Kathy had an extra windbreaker for me to wear. When we got up high like that, we could see for miles up the valley along the Guadalupes, well past Dog Canyon, and in the other direction we could see Lost Peak, Marcus Peak, and Bush Mountain, each of which are higher than 7800 ft. The highest peak in the park is Guadalupe Peak, at 8649 ft. (I believe) which is also the highest point in Texas, and a point higher than anywhere east of the Mississippee River in all of America! El Capitan, while majestic, is about 1150 ft. shorter than Guadalupe. So I'm up there, blowing on my harmonica, and letting the wind breeze through it, which was a hauntingly steady rhapsody in G, and to the West we can see for miles and miles. Someday, I'd like to pack food and a tent and go up into the mountains for a couple of days, rather than just an afternoon day-hike, because its gorgeous!

After we descended to our camp, we ate pesto on french bread and drank an ice-cold Celis, while surveying the mountains that rose up from Dog Canyon probably 2,000 ft. or more, and as the sun set we watched the colors dance across the mountainside as hundreds of birds danced about in the air in search of their dinner, too. I got out my old guitar and played all the Western or mountain-themed songs I could think of, until the sunlight was gone, and we had to go to sleep. We tried to arrange our tent so that we could lay with the door open and watch the stars above, which shone incredibly bright even though there was a half-moon to compete with for our attention. You could see constellations that you'd read about but can never see in the city, because of all the light pollution in modern American urban areas. Unfortunately, we were on a hillside sort of and all the blood in our tired bodies went into our heads and made sleeping that way difficult. So no staring at the stars, because you couldn't have any fires at all out West because of the drought. You were not even supposed to use campstoves to cook with in some places, the fire risk was so great! We didn't have one of those (yet) so we ate sandwiches, bagels, fruit, and cereals all weekend. We left Dog Canyon at 7am Central time, 6am Mt. time, and headed north towards Carlsbad, NM through that terrific landscape again. Once we got through Carlsbad and headed on Hwy. 285 towards Pecos, Tx and Ft. Stockton, Tx where we planned to get back on I-10, the drive was pretty desolate, and except for the mountains on Hwy. 54 in the distance to the west, it was pretty bleak and hot. Pecos, Tx, is where the World's First Rodeo was held, or so they claim on the signs there.

We ate breakfast at noon in Ft. Stockton, then headed east again. I-10 sure gets a bad rap for being boring, or desolate, but between Ft. Stockton and Juntion, Tx the landscape is so beautiful, with high bluffs and deserts full of 3 foot tall oaks with 90 ft. of roots beneath them yielding to the Hill Country. The landscape got green again, and finally, at 5pm we got off of the Interstate and onto the "Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway", that is Hwy. 290. We could tell we were nearing Austin when the traffic increased and we were surrounded with inconsiderate drivers turning without signalling, unable to stay in their lanes, and not observing the speed limit either by exceeding it by 20 mph or going 35 mph less than the posted 70 mph limit.

Austinites and Central-Texans have alot to learn from the lands out to the West. One of the first things you notice is the green Hill Country landscape, so heavily dependent on the St. Edward's Aquifer that extends north and west past Llano and into the West Texas plains that are experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent history. When you see a town like Pecos, Tx reduced nearly to ruins except for the determination of 12,000+ hardy souls, from once being one of the great cities of the American frontier, mostly because of the harsh arid climate. It would serve Austin and San Antonio's civic and business leaders to observe what will happen when the Aquifer is dried up and the Hill Country is as arid as the lands out west. I recommend that anyone with an anti-environmentalist viewpoint to drive once from El Paso to Austin or San Antonio, and witness that wonderful climactic transition first hand, in order to better understand what direction they're advocating when they endorse environmental degradation of the Hill Country in favor of so-called property rights. Your land won't be worth sqwat to your great-grandkids, folks, if its nothing but a scraggy, rocky wasteland because you want to play golf and build parking lots all along the Aquifer and its recharge zone. Also, when you leave the Nat'l Parks and witness the careless litter and pollution along the non-protected highways and towns, you'll see what a sham these property rights claims are for an abdication of our Society's obligations to its own future! The path of easy environmental irresponsibility is seductively cheap, and maybe a thrill for now, but when the heyday of having a big Aquifer to keep our thirsts (and our yards' and golf courses') quenched is over there's not going to be much left here to cry about. The people will try to flee to the Coast for water, only to find the beaches polluted, and the coastal towns over-populated already. Perhaps they'll try to truck or pipe water in from somewhere, but it won't come cheap.