Grandma turns 100!!

A couple of months ago (two days after we got back from spring break which is probably why it's taken me so long to post these) I flew to Utah to celebrate my grandma Colleen's 100th birthday!!

I also shamelessly stole a lot of pictures from Rosalind's IG stories. All five of her granddaughters were able to be there so it felt pretty special! 

I'm trying to remember everything we did--I think the first full day I was there we went to lunch and went shopping? (I know those happened just can't remember when, I was pretty tired.)

I also got to meet Ruth's cute new puppy Archie, who was very interested any time I was icing my leg post-run. 

Ruth made this incredible photo book and gave a copy to each of us. 

And I learned how to make a balloon arch! It's very easy when you have other people blowing up the balloons and tying them and all you have to do is stick them on. Follow me for more life hacks. ;-) 

Ruth and I had a fun time doing the flowers together (another of her many talents and fun to learn from her). 

We had a whole bunch of family dinners which were so fun--an awesome Italian night at Elise's new house the first night I got in, then an awesome adult dinner at a yummy Mexican place the second night, then a special celebratory dinner at Ruth's, an even more spectacular brunch the next day, and a really yummy charcuterie spread the last night. Truly delicious and so fun to be with people who enjoy food so much! And it was so amazing to get to spend so much time with my grandma celebrating her life and hearing her stories. 

We also got to go to a special party her assisted living center threw for her, safe to say it was the event of the year and all the residents were SO excited for her!!

I actually did not take very many photos this weekend, so this photo of Dad with Elise's daughters will have to stand in for Elise, who 10000% kept me running this weekend with a steady supply of Swig. (I was just beyond exhausted after spring break!!)

And one good shot of Timp to take us out, I think I took this one morning when I was running. So dang beautiful. 

 

Guadalupe Mountains day 3: McKittrick Canyon

 

On our last full day in Guadalupe, we had a very leisurely morning, a lengthy breakfast, and then meandered our way over to McKittrick Canyon--which we regretted as soon as we saw that McKittrick Canyon has gates which it locks at 5 PM! We were planning to do a much longer hike but cut it short because some of the kids were a little anxious about the timing (we ended up leaving at 3:30 so we totally could have gone another couple miles, darn it!). 

Most of the first two miles of this hike is soooo boring, you're basically just walking down an old access road with the sun beating down on you. There are a couple of stream crossings though which are fun. 

And then about 2 miles in you come to the Pratt cabin! Which has the coolest limestone roof so that it fully blends in with its surroundings. I loved the interior of this, I thought it was so fun. 

This was used as ranger housing for a few years after it was donated to the park. 



I would totally love this as a weekend home up in the mountains!

I mean, maybe update a few things...(and add a toilet back in, the ranger said they had to take it out because visitors kept using it even though it wasn't connected to anything, yikes). 



Seriously such a cool roof. 



After the cabin, the canyon got SO much prettier (the photo at the top is from this section). It was amazing how different the landscape here was from the other side of Guadalupe where we were camping and hiking the previous couple of days. This felt much more like the Rockies. 

I read that this is one of the few places in Texas that actually has fall colors with deciduous hardwood trees in the canyon, so it's really popular in autumn. 



And lots of wildflowers!

The next waypoint another mile up the trail is the Grotto, which was not at all what we were expecting and was so cool. It was a fun preview of Carlsbad the next day--same type of stone, same fossilized reef, just exposed to air instead of having its little acid bath for a few million years. 

All around the Grotto were these very cool stone picnic tables. We had a snack there and then Luke, Neil, Nathan, and I decided to check out the spur trail to the Hunter line cabin. 

And it was such a gorgeous backdrop! Again, felt right out of a Louis L'Amour novel (by this point I'd finished Jubal Sackett and was on to The Daybreakers, which I borrowed from Luke). 

Luke and Neil walked around the back of the cabin (Luke following Neil) and Neil was back to the path when we heard Luke yell "There's a rattlesnake!" He jumped back and the other three of us ran over and we watched it slither away. Luke said he heard it rattling right as he was about to step on it. 

Not to be too punny, but I definitely felt rattled after that and every stick I saw looked like a snake (Luke said he was feeling the same way and when we got back to the table he pulled his feet up under him!). Then I was just feeling pretty anxious about staying in that area so we got everyone back on the trail again. We decided not to go up to the Notch (which I was sooooooo bummed about) in the interests of time. I am basically the queen of saying "oh it's only going to be a few miles" and then adding on like...eight more, which everyone in my family knows, so it's probably good that they reined me in here. 

So on the way back to Pine Springs, we stopped off at the Frijole Ranch, which was very very cool! (The springhouse pumps out 6 gallons of water a minute, which absolutely fascinated Matthew.) 

They also had this display of branding irons; I took a picture for all my Western novel-loving family but never sent it to them. 

Then we went back to our campsite; I had to go do some work stuff again with the visitor's center WiFi and none of the kids wanted to go, so Neil and I went down together. We walked the Pinery trail (which was pretty anticlimactic) to see the ruins of the Pinery mail station, pictured above (Neil: "That's it? That's the payoff?")

And then it was time to head back to camp for our last night and start some packing up! Next up: Carlsbad Caverns, the last park of the trip! 

Guadalupe Mountains day 2: Guadalupe Peak

On our second day, we opted to hike Guadalupe Peak, which is the highest point in Texas. Here's my thoughts on that--it's cool to do because it's the highest point in Texas, and it has a cool little monument thingy on top, but the hike itself is frankly not that exciting and I think another hike (probably to the Bowl or all the way up McKittrick Ridge) would be much prettier. But having said that, I also think this is an iconic one that if you say you've been to this park, everyone's going to ask if you did this hike. Do with that what you will. 


Anyway, it's 8.4 miles with 3k of elevation gain. It honestly goes pretty quickly, I think we were up and down in less than 6 hours even with breaks. The trail gets a little rocky at the very end and there are a couple of sticky spots where it would be absolutely unsafe to hike if it's a windy day (people have been blown off this trail; 80 mph wind gusts are not uncommon. One trail report I read talked about people crawling around some of the more exposed parts). 



But our resident 6-year-old was just fine. (Note the napping Juliet at his feet.) 

Here's the view looking down on El Capitan; there's no established trail made by the park service, but there's a pretty well-defined social trail if you really feel like you must climb both. 

And here's a little Matthew with El Capitan in the background; on the right side you can see the gypsum sand dunes which are a smaller version of White Sands! (We didn't feel a need to visit that side of the park since we'd just been to White Sands the day before.) 

And here's the view looking down into the valley where the trailhead is...

One of the prettier bits of trail. It's pretty even BUT we saw people's headlamps coming down the trail around 10 pm and I definitely would not do that, too many cliff edges, bridges, and stairs. Plus mountain lions. 

The part of the trail to the left of Jules is the one that felt the most exposed to me and the part that would be really scary on a windy day. It was fine, maybe two feet where it felt a little "whoa okay," but again, wind would make it a very different story. 

Here's a better look at the path--fine in good weather, scary in bad weather. 

It was pretty chilly up at the summit! It was in the 60s on the day we hiked it, so really nice weather, but this would be brutal in summer because there's so little shade. 

For the first couple of miles you can see the valley laid out below you and we had fun always looking for our big orange tent!

Luke turned into an ooze ball for about a mile of this hike, so Neil was with Matty and I was with Luke and everyone else was chomping at the bit up ahead. 

Pretty cute for an ooze ball. 

And then we got back and it was still pretty early, maybe like 3? So we went to the visitor's center (Nathan reading his book the whole way, please note that multiple children brought books on hikes and would pull them out whenever we made them stop so people could catch up). 

Matty got his Junior Ranger stuff and then Neil took all the kids back to the campsite; I stayed behind at the visitor's center for a few hours to grade project proposals and respond to emails. 



And then when I got back to camp around 6, Neil had dinner ready AND had heated water for a shower! Luxury! Except it was in the 30s by this point and the water had cooled off more quickly than either of us had anticipated. He thought I was exaggerating my yelps while I was showering and then he had the same chilly experience later...but it always feels sooo good to be clean! We showered every day in Big Bend but I only managed to talk myself into one while we were in Guadalupe--just soooo much colder!

You know what a PhD and an extensive knowledge of heat transfer is good for? Making Jiffy Pop on a camp stove, that's what. (He came to my rescue on the second and third batch, the first one was...not good.) 

Meanwhile Nathan was happily reading in the hammock (the next morning the ranger very politely informed us that we could not hang hammocks on the trees but that we were welcome to hang them anywhere else. She suggested the fence as an alternative, I'm still not sure how that would work, so we just took them down). 




And out of order, but Matty had the best bedhead that day. Definitely worth memorializing.