More Photos!!

Here's our drive from Albuquerque, NM (which sucked for the one evening we spent there, though we did have a good breakfast and Papa John's for dinner) to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in TX. We drove through Roswell, NM, thinking it would be fun to get lunch there and take pictures of crappy alien stuff, but it ended up being totally lame and everything was closed, didn't have vegetarian food, and we ended up having Subway, instead.

Once we made it to the actual park, where it was very hot, we set up our tent the shadow of the Guadalupe Mountains, which are actually the Capitan Reef, and ancient (non-coral) fossilized reef over 250 million years old. The next day (which I think was Sunday) we hiked for a few hours down the McKittrick Canyon trail (link goes to a Map). For some reason, it cost us another ten bucks to do this, but it was worth it. See, the park is part of a high-desert plateau called the Colorado Plateau (?) which makes up much of the South West, including the Grand Canyon. In addition, the park is home to some permanent spring-fed rivers, which means that in the canyons and in the high back country, this "desert" is actually pretty lush, as you can see in the photos. In fact, the foliage as you get into the canyon switches from desert shrubs to Rockies-like terrain, full of pines and oaks and maples. It's weird to see a cactus growing under the shade of a Ponderossa Pine, right next to an old Maple Tree! I should also add that the weather on this trip has been pretty amazing. Mostly very clear skies, nice days, cool evenings, but occasionally super duper hot (we had to pack in the hike after just a few hours b/c we were drenched with sweat!) and it has rained so hard that you can't see out the windshield and the car is hydroplaning all over the place, complete with massive thunder/lightening storms. Also, there have been crazy strong winds, which to a Californian like me has been really strange, since summers in Cali are so gentle. Anyway, the trip out to Austin has been good, and now we begin our search for a new apartment. More photos and stories to come, however, as we continue this adventure called life!