Day 3 (cont.) Spring Vacation

Monday March 2 - (continued)

We enjoyed great weather for our hike into McKittrick Canyon and seeing the Pratt Cabin.  What a rare beauty it is here in the high mountains which are surrounded by the sparsely populated plains of the Chihuahuan Desert.  This vast arid realm extends south for hundreds of miles into Mexico.  The Chihuahuan Desert receives between 10 and 20 inches of rain a year; in Summer, temperatures rise to 90 degress and above.  Although it may look barren at first glance, the desert is full of plant and animal life; adapting to this demanding environment is the key to survival.

Our next stop was at the Frijole Ranch History Museum to learn about the people who have lived in and around the Guadalupe Mountains.

Although the Cultural Museum was not open, we wondered around the site (peeking thru the windows) which includes a springhouse, schoolhouse, bunkhouse, barn, and picnic area.

The most amazing thing was to see the spring, right here in the middle of the desert!

Cold clear water, a life-giving source, bubbling up out of the ground at a rate of 6 gallons per minute!  The water is channeled though a trench, around behind the house to an orchard, with little trenches dug to furnish each tree with water.

What an amazing thing for early settlers to come upon this incredible flow of spring water.

 This is the one-room school on the site.

I was fascinated by these multi-trunk trees growing at the site.

Frijole Spring is not the only spring in the area.  We walked on the handicapped accessible path to the Manzanita Spring, which has been dammed up to create a small pond.

 I don't think I could have survived in this harsh environment, many miles from any other civilization! 

We enjoyed a late afternoon snack when we reached Manzanita Spring and found this nice bench to sit on.

 Right nearby was this most prickly, thorny bush.

We continued our car-tour by stopping at The Pinery to see the ruins of a mid-1800's Butterfield stagecoach station.

 The Butterfield stagecoaches began carrying mail through the mountains on the nation's first transcontinental mail route, traveling from St. Louis to San Francisco.

 Rock walls are the only remnants left today of the once thriving Butterfield Stagecoach Station.

Our tent was a welcome sight after our day of sightseeing and hiking.  We enjoyed the nice view out the front opening.  I was sort of surprised to see so many folks here at the tent campsites.  Many more "tenters" than "RVers".  The campsites are arranged so that we had complete privacy at our campsite. 

Guadalupe Mountains National Park is a hiker/backpacker mecca!