West Texas on the way to El Paso (Sorry this is out of order)

I had to leave Big Bend to find an RV park with good wifi to do Tuesday nurse visits.  And so, on to Alpine TX, and the Lost Alaskan RV Park.  The story goes that an Alaskan flew his private plane to Alpine and really liked the place.  He established the RV Park some decades ago and it is a nice one.  They have planted a pine tree and have a brick picnic table for each site.  The pine trees are Afghanistan pines, well suited to a dry, high altitude climate and are large and green even now.

One day while I was at Lost Alaskan, it went down to 22 degrees and snowed!

My little camper made it through the cold pretty well.  The grey water valve froze but thawed in the sun the next day.   While waiting for the valve to thaw, I spent the day driving to Davis Mountains State Park.  Back in the 30's, the Civilian Conservation Corp built park buildings all over the country, including Indian Lodge here.  They took care to build in a style in keeping with each location.

The interior of the lobby of Indian Lodge has been lovingly restored  from the original architectural plans.

It is a complex of rooms around courtyards in the Pueblo style with vistas out across the valley and mountains.

What a location for a writer's retreat!

The surrounding mountains are dramatic and wild.  

I have been fascinated by the geology clearly in view all over these mountains.  Even though I've never had a chance to study geology, I can see the outcropping of rocks here must be much harder than the surrounding lands, which have worn away more easily.  

Driving further into the mountains, I came upon the McDonald Observatory, which takes advantage of the West Texas dark skies.

From Alpine, I drove up to Guadalupe Mountain National Park.  These mountains are made of a reef formed in an inland seas 260 million years ago.  The reef was buried under salt and silt when the sea dried up, but then parts of it were thrust upward, forming these mountains.  

El Capitan mountain, with Guadalupe Peak behind it -- the highest land in Texas.

The Davis Mountains, like other ranges in the area, were once covered in forest vegetation.  However, over the centuries, west Texas has slowly been getting drier and drier and the only places where these forest environments still persist is high in the mountain valleys and basins.  There is a rich ecosystem there with oaks, aspens, madrone, and other trees, as well as deer, bear and mountain lions.  There are also some plants and animals from these ancient forest environments which can only be found now in the remnants of forest in these mountain islands, surrounded by desert.

The reason I went camping in Guadalupe park is that it is close to the Carlsbad caverns, which I wanted to visit.  Oh my!  You can walk down into the caverns, 750 feet down to the floor of the main cavern.  It takes about an hour of steadily walking down and down.  

Before you go into the cavern, a ranger asks everyone not to touch any of the rock formations, or eat or drink anything except water, and to spit out any gum, to prevent chemical changes to the rock.  She also asked that everyone whisper because voices reverberate loudly in the caves.  Amazingly, most everyone went into the caves and walked around them in near silence.  

The geology of how these caves were formed, and then decorated by eons of dripping mineral-ladened water is too complicated for me to explain.  The results are extraordinary.  And the caves go on for miles.  The main floor of the cave is equivalent to 14 football fields.  

I was in awe for the three hours I was there, in the womb of the earth.   

I thought the rock formations would be dripping still, but many of the water sources which formed them have dried up, leaving only these shapes to mark where they had been.  

Sadly, the heater in the camper stopped working and the nights in the mountains were going to get quite cold.  Previously I had the same problem repaired by an Alpine TX shop.  So I headed back to Alpine to have the same guy look at it again.  Of course, when I got to Alpine, the heater was working fine.  I hope I can spend more time in the Guadalupe Mountains next year.