Category: National Parks & Monuments

Justin and I had done a short Yosemite visit on our Honeymoon road trip and it was enough to put it on our list of parks to return to for future years.  Well, the year had come.  Unfortunately we weren’t ready for family hikes due to our oldest’s leg still healing but we had a great time none the less.

This was a very interesting stay.  First of all, our GPS took us on “the shortest route” there which turned out to be down a 27 mile dirt road in the back country.  Interesting choice Google that we blindly followed.  I was driving and suddenly saw a sign that said “payment ends.”  What?!  Why was the pavement ending?  We checked the map but it would have been quite a ways to backtrack onto an alternative route so we decided to continue.  

We made it to Big Bend National Park and there were trees!  Hurray!  Don’t get me wrong, these were still some of the most inhospitable trees I’ve ever seen, Mesquite trees with daggers up to an inch and a half long every 1/2”.  But, still, it gave the appearance of something that resembled a forest and they gave shade which was lovely!

From our current camping spot in a free dirt lot we were able to travel a half hour with Azul to get to the Guadeloupe Mountains.  Not bad at all.  This was the girls’ and my first time in Texas!

This was an incredible monument with such a great slot canyon hike!  What they are referring to as “tent” rocks are hoodoos made from igneous rock and through erosion have become visible to us.  Many of these tent rocks had giant boulders balancing on top of them which is a pretty incredible sight!

We ended up going to Valles Caldera since it was so close and we wanted to see the source of the volcanic eruption that had created and helped form all those amazing caveats we saw at Bandelier National Monument.  

Since Los Alamos and Bandelier are so close to one another we arrived at the campground in good time even after making some stops along the way.  We even had enough time to take a hike!