White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks
Nov. 2021
We visited White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, and Guadalupe Natl. Parks all in the same week. White Sands and Carlsbad are popular parks. Guadalupe was much quieter in comparison.
We stayed outside Alamogordo, first, near PistachioLand, which has the world’s largest pistachio. So, of course we had to go! It was very crowded in the cheesy gift shop, but Craig bought several bags of flavored pistachios. He loved the lemon-lime flavor!
We went during Thanksgiving week, and school was out, so there were lots of families with kids sledding down the dunes at White Sands. We borrowed sleds from our campground and tried to sled, but without much success! However, the dunes at White Sands were much easier to climb than the deep sand at Coral Pink Sand Dunes. We went on a ranger-led sunset walk, during which the ranger told us about plant and animal life on the dunes. White Sands is the world’s largest gypsum dune field.
From White Sands, we drove a few hours to Carlsbad.
We reserved a timed entry on Reservation.gov for a self-guided tour of the caves, and were glad we did, because it was very busy and we would not have been able to get a spot if we had waited till we arrived at the park. We wanted to begin our tour at the Natural Entrance, rather than taking the elevator down. This made the tour a lot longer, but we would have missed a lot if we had just taken the elevator down to the Big Room. Parts of the Natural Entrance trail were pretty dark, and we wished we had brought flashlights, because it took awhile for our eyes to adjust. We then toured the Big Room, and took the elevator back up. Good thing we didn’t have to hike back up: it’s 750 feet up—equal to a 75-story building. The tour of the Big Room, which is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, was an additional 1.25 miles. It was pretty humid in the cave—my hair majorly frizzed up!
Natural Entrance to Carlsbad Caverns
Guadalupe Mtns. N.P. was about an hour from Carlsbad. We hiked part of the trail into McKittrick Canyon as far as Pratt Cabin, roundtrip 4.8 miles. We missed the peak of fall color, but there was a little bit left.
The trail to Pratt Cabin had very few people on it when we visited. It was pretty peaceful compared to some other parks we’ve been to.
The tree with the red berries and interesting bark is a Texas madrone.
Beautiful view from the porch of Pratt Cabin.
We spent most of our time in McKittrick Canyon. There was more to see, but the day turned cloudier and chilly, so we cut our visit short, and didn’t visit The Pinery Butterfield Stage ruins or Frijole Ranch museum. We made just one more stop after the visitor center: we drove south on the highway to a rest area outside the park so we could get a view of Guadalupe Mountain, the highest mountain in Texas at an elevation over 8700 feet. The rest area also had a great view of the valley below.
Not a good iPhone image. The tallest mountain, Guadalupe, is actually the one in the center of the picture. The peak on the left is El Capitan.
We enjoyed our first-time visits to these 3 National Parks. I normally don’t like caves because I don’t like tight spaces, but Carlsbad Caverns is huge with high ceilings and really interesting formations. We were really glad we went. After these parks, we began our 2-1/2 month stay in different parts of Texas to keep warm over the winter. Guess we are snowbirds, now!