Setting off on a Thursday at 12 and 4 hours of John le Carre's second main character pronouncing "Teddy you asshole" in an East German accent, later we stop for coffee here (you need to zoom in to see the importance of this)
Fuelled up we then hit donkey country...not the one wearing a straw hat and carrying casks of Amontillado over the mountains..the nodding kind and not just the odd one but thousands of the things in a great expanse of nuthin...nope sorry....absolutely nuthin
You could die out there and your bones crumble to blow about with the tumbleweed before anyone would find you and given the lack of any habitation they would probably eat you anyway..
Do you remember P's Myrtle Beach myth that got dashed (May 2009, Honey Honey) Well all the way there he kept announcing in a gravelly Mexican accent..
We're going West of the Pecos my friend, Then mashing the grub from his neat tequila in between his teet....
No I fib, license poetically.
Pecos.....
So we had had Pecos, we had had donkeys in absolutely nuthin.....then we had absolutely nuthin....not even the odd car for 2 hours.
Oh I lie again..a deer caught in the glare of the headlights in a lunar landscape.
Men landing on the moon poppycock they were "west of the Pecos my friend".
It is that nuthin the legal speed limit is 80 for 150 miles.
8.45 pm, it's dark, remember not a soul for two hours.
We arrive.....a campsite with 3 toilets, 2 sinks and an outdoor pump and sink to wash dishes. The nearest petrol station is another 40 miles away and the nearest hotel 50 miles away.
And it's full!
Including an American woman in the toilet block whose father came from .......Hull!
We sleep in the car and the old skiiing hip (See 28/01/09 Wydaho) comes back to haunt me along with P muttering in disbelief and wondering which piece of God forsaken, cotton picking wood work his fellow campers crept out of about every 10 minute.
Daybreak from the car:
Breakfast out of the boot followed by a washing session at the pump
And before our main quest of the trip, which I am conviced is going to leave me even more kna...d we go in search of a vacated site. Hurrah! And an awesome aspect to it is as well.
And now for the heighest peak in Texas, 8,000 feet ..imaginatively named Guadeloupe Peak and not one of those in the above photos. Already being 5,000 feet above sea level, 3,000 feet over 4.5 miles on the outward trip seems not a bad climb, except that the first 2 miles contain most of the ascent:
The odd lightning strike
Precarious boulders
The first of many false summits
The scary bridge we crossed
3.5 hours later the summit.. fresh as a daisy
And absolutely nuthin
Except the wind, P and El Capitan.
Sandwich box empty..but ample water and emergency Cadbury fruit and nut and Maltesers at the ready we start the descent. We set off at a fair lick, me in front (for a change). But at the rickety bridge I get this sense of needing to look back only to see P holding the right hand side of his face and head in his handsbecause of the most crushing pain, whire as a sheet....We are in the middle of nowhere still 3 miles up and right next to the steepest drop with P going slightly dizzy...how can this be he's the one playing over 30's and 40's football every week. It is at this point he muses:
Do you think we've hit our limit?
We sit for 15 minutes and fortunately I have brought pills...(for my hips hey ho). I make him walk in front now..gradually the pain subsides and we still have no idea what it was.
3 hours later we are almost at the bottom when we meet Parkie who is just going up the mountain to help anyone getting lost after dark. I am thinking about how fit he must be to do this about twice a week..so is P who has now almost fully recovered.
We ask what is in the Delaware Mountains to go to see.
Urgh, nuthin. It's private.
A private mountain range wow...
Yup you can't go in. The guy who owns Amazon owns it, he's building a space launch pad.
Isn't competition good...Richard Branson is apparently building one just over the border in New Mexico. I can see the bogoff wars already.
Anyway he can't hang around, got stragglers to check on. P and I emerge through the gate at the bottom 7.5 hours after we set off and P makes me raise my arms in a victory salute.
Luxury cooking with my two stoves... and then it is dark
I need to sleep, drat will have to forego the ranger talk on creepy crawlies.
We settle down, P re-visiting the joys of a mummy sleeping bag.
At this point being Mountain time we realise that we are an hour behind the time on P's watch..we have gone to bed at 7.30!
Day 2 and sunrise from a tent
On Rangers recommendation we are off to Mcittrick Canyon, a gentle walk within our limitation..no hills. The only place in the park with running fresh water
Walking into the cantyon was like being in a western with proper high sides and Injuns watching from the ridge.
People come to get the Texan equivalent of leaf peeping and the colours were beautiful but I limited my shots because with no electricity on site and no means of re-charging the battery I didn't really manage to do it justice
Like the Delaware Mountains the canyon was bought by a private citizen, Pratt who was the founding surveying engineer of Exxon oil and actually spotted it on one of his surveying flights. He had a lodge built in 1930 halfway along. It is perfectly preserved. Unlike the DM's he then gifted it over to the nation and the National Park.
This "grotte" was our ultimate destination in the canyon.
There was also a hunting lodge at the end but it's only resident now was this:
A pumpkin spider.
So that was the morning and another 7 miles under out belt...impressed huh? My hips weren't.
For the afternoon entertainment..Carlsbad Caverns just over the border in New Mexico.
Home to the largest underground cavern outside of Borneo and some really cool formations:
The lion's tale...
Least said
And the other reason for coming. Can you see the snaking line of black dots? Bats...Mexican Fruit bats ....30,000 of them. You sit in an amphitheatre at the opening to the cavern from which they emerge at sunset. You can't actually take pictures there because any electric equipment upsets their sonar and there is a terrible muddle.:
This being Texas though there is always a bigger better something somewhere...the bat colony in Austin which lives under a bridge...2 million.
Then it is a drive home accompanied by the sunset:
Sunrise on our last day.
West Texas is the prettiest part of Texas by far and has an eery quality. having got to Guadelopue National Park we have decided in the spring to attempt Big Bend National Park which is 3 hours south of "Pecos my friend", on the Mexican as opposed to the New Mexico border.
Ah well time to go 8 hours journey ahead....and
Teddy you ass hole!
Next stop November - Miami and Key West to celebrate Riona's 21s. Then by crikey it's Christmas.
x
