People always ask me if I can pick a favorite destination— and I usually say something to the affect of ‘most of the National Parks are pretty spectacular, and it would be impossible to pick a favorite since they are so different.’
But when visiting Guadalupe Mountains National Park, I was reminded of the famous phrase “They can’t all be winners.” It just… was frankly near the bottom of the list for me. In retrospect, there was a lot of reasons for this– some of which had to do with conditions in the park, and some of which had to do with my declining mental state as I neared a year and 1/2 of full-time van living.
In a desolate area in West Texas, Guadalupe Mountains isn’t one you would typically pass by. That said, it’s not far from Carlsbad Caverns National Park (which is *well* worth the stop), and that proximity may have you thinking, ‘Maybe I should also visit Guadalupe Mountains National Park while I’m in the area?’— let me suggest this: you can save yourself the detour.
Part of my malaise might have been the time of year I visited— late-winter, early-spring (February in South Texas). This made for less-than-ideal conditions: but with temperatures soaring wildly in the summer, I also wondered if this harsh place was ever terribly hospitable.
My arrival was met with a sign in the visitors center declaring winds were whipping at 50-60 miles-an-hour. High wind warnings were posted everywhere, but having driven 7 hours to get there— I wasn’t in a position to pull up stakes and leave. So, I figured out a short hike I could do to have at least a small experience in the park area, and then booked a campsite to hunker down for the night.
The short hike I chose was very mild— almost no elevation gain– and the stark dryness of the air was exacerbated by the high winds. Accordingly, I brought far more water than I felt I needed for Mac and I, and set off on the trailhead for the easy Pratt Cabin Hike.
Perhaps it was the cloudy day, but the desert land appeared to be a much more muted landscape compared to desert surrounds of Tucson, from which I had just come. The vegetation just seemed browner and flatter, with the growth of plants hampered by the altitude and winds in the harsh environment. Spring had yet to come to the area— so it looked more barren than the more colorful and lush desert landscapes I had gotten used to seeing by this point (e.g. Tucson, Organ Pipe, etc).
This made the hike feel relatively featureless, save the strange long arms of the Yucca plant, which reached up and punctured the mountain horizon every now and then.
Feeling a bit disillusioned, this moment caused me to pause and reflect on the way that traveling so much can actually provide TOO MANY reference points for a brain. At some stage of my van living, I realized that everywhere NEW that I saw had a too-handy comparison to somewhere else I’d already been: which made the travel feel less like discovery, and more like a repackaging of some other things I’d already seen. I was clearly feeling tired, and a bit cynical.
If you can say, “THIS desert landscape reminded me of W + X + Y, with a little of Z throw in”– are you really exploring, or just rehashing old ground? It was a thought-experiment that stuck between my eyes.
It was on this day that my fatigue with van living became more pronounced to me, even though I am sure it had been building for awhile. I was getting a bit jaded the further I went. Here I was, surrounded by beauty in a National Park, and my reaction was, essentially: ‘meh.’
It was there, on this flat and windy trail in Guadalupe National Park that I realized: it might be getting to be time to hang up my spurs on van living. I didn’t know when yet, but I knew I was on a countdown.
The hike wound into a canyon that was more scenic as I covered the last mile into the cabin. This cabin had been the 1930s. Falling apart, but still somewhat intact thanks to a sturdy build of the river rock around the area, I rested on the same porch as the inhabitants had– sitting in a rocking chair while I ate my sandwich for lunch, with Mac at my feet.
With the wind picking up as the afternoon went on, we didn’t linger long— and Mac and I did the return trip in half the time. We wanted to get back to our campsite before sunset, and wanted to figure out how to angle the vehicle to blunt the terrible wind.
I’m happy to say that I have only run into two truly surly National Park rangers in my two years of van travel— folks who seemed to contradict the entire point of rangerdom by seething at the idea of your very presence as a visitor. One of them, I’m sorry to say, was the ranger manning the campsite area at Guadalupe Mountains— she greeted me bluntly by saying the winds would be high, and sarcastically bid me ‘good luck’ in keeping my gear safe before walking away in a huff.
Of course, it’s nearly impossible to bed down and sleep when 60-mile-an-hour gusts are broadsiding your van and shaking it like a packet of panko bread crumbs. I spent a miserable night, beginning to drift off — only to be woken by a violent rocking of the van. I think I got zero sleep that night.
Which was the icing on the cake of crappy feelings I experienced at Guadalupe.
Here’s a big caveat about my visit to Guadalupe Mountains National Park— I realize that I was really IN my own feelings on that day. Also, I was occupying an area that was a fairly shallow distance into the park throughout my hike and stay overnight— and according to the maps, the desert views got more impressive the deeper into the park one ventured. There was an available dirt road that led back into the park that took over two hours to travel and navigate, and I can’t speak to what was back there– I was too concerned about the high winds to make that attempt.
It was also a cloudy day, which never sits right with someone who carries the nickname ‘Sun.’ While there were patches of sunlight, it was so overcast by evening that sunset was nonexistent.
All that to say, maybe you’d absolutely adore Guadalupe Mountains National Park in a way I could not– while I was coming to the slow realization that I was fed up with van living.
When I saw the forecast was not meant to change, I was thrilled to leave the next day via the back roads of Texas that led there. Only to literally drive right into a cloud of persistent wildfire smoke that hung over me for the next several hours— West Texas was burning at the time, and Mac and I drove fast to ensure we wouldn’t end up burning with it.
It was an inglorious but fitting end to a haphazard visit to a national park I won’t be going to ever again.
Posted by Sun
