This morning we checked out of our room in El Paso after spending a total of about 12 hours in it. Leaving the city via I-10 east, we had our first good daytime look at the area and couldn’t believe how depressed El Paso looked. There were densely-packed slums as far as we could see, disappearing far into the smog-filled distance. I literally said “wow, I can’t believe there are cities in America that look like this.” That’s when I realized that we were looking across the Rio Grande, at Juárez, Mexico—one of the top crime capitals of the world. Geography was always my worst subject.

Our destination for today was Carlsbad, New Mexico. We’re here to visit Carlsbad Caverns, which we’ll do tomorrow. But today, our route from El Paso took us past another National Park, albeit a less popular one: Guadalupe Mountains. So of course we felt compelled to stop, even though online reviews led us to believe that it was one of the less-spectacular national parks.

So, spoilers: the reviews are mostly accurate—Guadalupe Mountains is no Yosemite. While Guadalupe Mountains is geologically interesting as one of the premier examples of an ancient marine fossil reef, as a non-geologist casual day hiker it mostly just feels like a nice municipal park. Although we weren’t treated to the same caliber of scenery that we’ve been spoiled by over the past several weeks at other national parks, we still enjoyed our time here.

We walked the Devil’s Hall trail, an easy four mile hike through a rocky canyon to a tall narrow corridor that the trail is named for. Other than a bit of rock scrambling near the end, the hike itself was uneventful (though Lori did drop her sandwich in the dirt at one point, and that was kind of hilarious).

Here are a few photos (click for larger versions):

Admiring the fall colors!

Lori on the Devil’s Hall trail.

In the Devil’s Hall!