We were about half an hour away from the Guadalupe Mountains NP entrance, so it was an easy drive, and we got to cross back into Texas for a hot minute!
Karlee gets into her crate under the bus in the bay when we leave, plus we were gone during the day (and not dawn or dusk), so I wasn’t worried about any of the wildlife bothering her.
The Guadalupe Mountains are beautiful when you see them from the road, and then once you get back a few miles on the trail, they become really impressive. They’re home to over 1,000 different plant species! The habitats range from gypsum dunes to coniferous forests! Imagine being in the desert, and then seeing a Christmas tree. There are Douglas firs, ponderosa pines, and more. So weird and cool!
We hiked the Devil’s Hall Trail, an almost four mile trail through a rocky wash, leading to a natural rock staircase and finally to a hallway formed by steep canyon walls. It’s one of my favorite hikes to date!
Welcome to the desert!
Reaching Devil’s Hall was a great payoff!
Some hikers offered to take a picture of us!
We did get a little turned around on the way back. It’s amazing how a trail can look so simple going one way, and then on the way back have multiple turn-offs that you didn’t notice before. Thankfully some other hikers came by and pointed us in the right direction (there were some stacked stones near the trail pick-up, easy to miss, in our defense!).
We were happy to make it back uneaten- mountain lions roam these parts, after all!