Our Carlsbad Experience, Guadalupe Mountains NP

Yeah. Sinkholes in the city.

After our visit at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park, we drive through Carlsbad again and head south on US 180 heading towards the Texas-New Mexico state border. We pass Carlsbad Caverns NP on the way and I had a passing thought to stop again. But we zoom by to head to one of the newer National Parks.

Our photo of El Capitan

Guadalupe Mountains National Park is located in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas and contains Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,749 feet in elevation. It also contains El Capitan, long used as a landmark by people traveling along the old route later followed by the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line. The restored Frijole Ranch House is now a small museum of local ranching history and is the trailhead for Smith Spring. The park covers 135 square miles and is in the same mountain range as Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Part of McKittrick Canyon.

The park also contains McKittrick Canyon. During the Fall, McKittrick comes alive with a blaze of color from the turning Bigtooth Maples, in stark contrast with the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. A trail in the canyon leads to a stone cabin built in the early 1930s, formerly the vacation home of Wallace Pratt, a petroleum geologist who donated the land in order to establish the park.

My Sweetie in the sun.

Me in the shade!

After we stopped into the Visitor's Center to pay our fees, buy a tee shirt, and look at the exhibit, we head over to the McKittrick Canyon entrance to the park. It's getting to be lunch time and we brought some cold fried chicken with us. After finally finding a bit of shade and a place to sit, we open up our cold fried chicken to realize we didn't have any napkins with us. Uh, oh. Well, I guess I can always use the grease to cover my skin to stop the sun burn. :)

Removing loose rocks

McKittrick Canyon has a couple of trails but the one we were interested in the most was the Permian Reef Geology Trail. An arduous trail, this one seemed to have everything my Sweetie and I wanted to see. However, the trailhead was not very well marked and we walked a very long hour and change to finally get to the first marker on the Geology Trail. To get to the second marker, we were going to be going pretty darned near straight up!

The heat, sun, foot, and just plain still tired from yesterday, I asked my Sweetie if we could head back. Fortunately, we found a short cut back to the parking lot where I immediately downed an entire bottle of Gatorade. (Please note: whenever my Sweetie and I walk, we always carry a camel back with 64 oz. of water, one or two extra 12 oz. water bottles, Gatorade bottle, hard candy, and some granola bars. I also carry a knife with me. We do try to hike prepared.)

We have the truck open to allow air flow in it as we are trying to cool down. After a few minutes, we get in an head over to Frijole Ranch History Museum and Manzanita Spring. To get there, we must take the highway for a few miles and this gives us plenty of time to use the air conditioner!

We get to the turn-off to the Ranch road and start up a caliche road. We were just about to the parking lot when my Sweetie screamed, "What is that? It's orange and black!"

I had never heard her like that before so I immediately stop the truck, skidding slightly to the right on the rocky road. Just before I come to a complete halt, my Sweetie is moving backwards in her seat and I see this very, very large flying insect come up from the floorboard and land on her window. I attempt to control the skid, tell my Sweetie everything is OK, and drop her window at the same time.

Tarantula Hawk. Scary in the car.

The very, very large black & orange winged insect causally flies out the window. We both close the window! What the heck was that?

It was, of course, a Tarantula Hawk, a.k.a., Pepsis Wasp. This wasp is one of two insects in the world with the most painful sting! Fortunately, these wasps are not aggressive and stings are rare! We knew it was a Tarantula Hawk because we immediately got on the Internet and verified what we saw. 

Velvet Ant

In passing, I mentioned that the sting of the velvet ant (or cow killer ant) was also extremely painful (it, too, like the Tarantula Hawk, is a solitary wasp). As we are walking to the museum, we see a velvet ant! What a coincidence! I have not seen one of these in several months. This wasp also has a monster sting! I did some research and actually found a scale of sting pain!

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index rates insect stings on a pain scale of 1 to 4 where 1 is mild irritation and 4 is blinding, brilliant pain. The Tarantula Hawk, along with the Central American bullet ant, rated a 4 and is described as "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath." The Velvet Ant is much less painful (hah!) and rates a 3 and could be described as "Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail."

My Sweetie and I were very lucky that the Tarantula Hawk is not very aggressive. Plus, only the female of both species sting and we might have had a male in the truck. Either way, I am very glad neither of us received a sting.

After that experience, we looked at the Frijole Ranch house (it was locked), the spring (it was cold!), and the surrounding area before we decided to head back to the campground and call it a day.  We were very glad to get back to our PuP and wait for our BBQ to be delivered by the KOA staff.