El Paso + Guadalupe Mountains National Park | US Road Trip Days 7-9

So you can mark this experience down as things I didn't expect to see. So El Paso kind of took us by surprise. That was much cooler than I thought it would be. Yeah. Greetings from El Paso! We just arrived in El Paso after spending the last day and a half in Marfa, Texas. We are on our road trip from Seattle to Texas and back. It's a two-week-long road trip. If you've missed any of the road trip vlogs that we've posted, check them out below. This is day seven of our road trip and the beginning of our journey back to Seattle. Our journey home is a lot longer than our journey to Texas. We're going to stop and enjoy the sights a little bit more. So we're in El Paso for the next day and a half and then we're going to head to New Mexico. We're really excited. We have some national park adventures, some coffee shop adventures. So we're excited to have you guys check it out with us. First things first in El Paso, we're going to meet up with our friends Aaron and Devin who live here and they're taking us to what's supposed to be the best Mexican restaurant in town called L&J Cafe. Oh man, I'm so hungry. I don't know about you. I'm starving. Chips and salsa is our jam. Maybe some fajitas. Some kind of tacos. I don't know. Maybe all of it. Good morning. It's day eight. We are still in El Paso. Last night we had a dinner at L&J Cafe with some friends. It was delicious. Yum yum yum. We had a massive mound of guacamole. It was so good. It's kind of embarrassing. So today is just a work day for us. So I work remotely for a tech company and during this trip I have to work a total of five days. I just didn't have enough time to take all of them off. So I've already worked one day from the car on our way to Texas and then I have four more days I have to work and today is one of them. So we're just gonna work from coffee shops today. Maybe squeeze in a little taco break which is really good because I kind of have a cold coming on and I don't feel very great so it's trying to get more sleep and then trying to rest a little bit before we do some hiking tomorrow and then a lot more hiking the rest of the trip. So first stop today is District Coffee in El Paso. It's downtown. It looks really cool. We're gonna hang out here for a couple hours and then maybe grab some lunch and then go to another coffee shop. So I got the District Latte which is coconut and dark chocolate. They said it's their top seller. Very excited to try it. It's like an almond joy or a mound I guess. Oh so good. We're at El Taquito. I got huevos con chorizo and tortillas, beans, potatoes and Katherine got flautas with like a chipotle sauce and it came with rice and beans. I'm loving the avocado on top of there and then we got a gigantic horchata so it's super sweet, super delicious and we're gonna devour this. We also got chips and guacamole and the chips were like straight out of the fryer. They were so hot. The freshest chips I've ever had in my life. This place is amazing. A plus so far. Okay we just gotta say the people of El Paso are amazing. We've had like the best hospitality since we've been here. So first at the coffee shop this morning we were there working and the barista guy just like brought us cups of water. Like who does that? That's so nice. He just brought us glasses of water and then we were walking out of El Taquito and they were asking us where we're from. I don't know if it's the camera. Yeah maybe we stand out because of the camera. Maybe they think we're important which we're not. Yeah so the lady was saying like normal stuff like oh thanks like make a comment on Yelp or whatever and she asked us where we're from told her and then we were walking out and the guy cooking behind the counter was asking us again where we're from and he said oh well here's a Mexican gordita. I don't know what's in it yet but I'm gonna give it a shot in a minute. But that's just so cool and nice. Normally people aren't that friendly. So I mean people in Texas are very friendly to begin with compared to other parts of the country but this is like extra special. Like we don't even experience this in Austin. So very cool. So El Paso you rock. Thank you so much. You've been awesome so far. Okay so like Catherine mentioned she's having a work day today so I dropped her off at Masi Menos coffee shop. So now Nini and I are gonna go on a little afternoon daddy-daughter adventure. We're gonna go over to Franklin Mountain State Park and maybe go downtown something like that. It's a little rainy right now. I'm just waiting out for the rain to stop and then we'll go have some fun. So you can mark this down in the list of things I didn't expect to see when we on our trip to El Paso. I came to Franklin Mountains State Park while Catherine's at Masi Menos doing some work. Kona and I are here and I didn't expect it to be snow covered. So Kona and I are doing a little walk here maybe for a little bit because the ranger at the at the gate said that they might be closing the highway to get into this place. So we're gonna spend a few 30 minutes here maybe and probably head out. I'm a little nervous. I don't want to get trapped here. So again pretty crazy. There's snow probably an inch or something. I'm not a meteorologist because I've been recommended that I should be on YouTube. But I think Kona is enjoying it maybe. But there's snow everywhere huh Kona? So I made it to the Aztec cave. I put it in quotations because people that discovered it thought it was a cave that was used by the Aztecs but it was actually just Native Americans. I was about to leave the park. Kona and I were hiking around and it was just snowing a lot and I was kind of getting cold and tired of being wet but then I was driving around the park and saw a trail for a sign for Aztec trail. Aztec cave trail and so decided to check it out. Can't pass up something with a cool name like that. So we're in this cave and it's really cool. It was pretty steep getting up here but it was fun nonetheless and it's a big huge cave and it's super cool looking out. I don't know if you can see there. Super cool looking out into the snow. So Kona and I are gonna enjoy it for a little bit and then head back down. So I just met back up with Adam and Kona and I'm very jealous of their little snowy adventure. I got to see all the photos and videos and I'm so sad I wasn't there with them. Sucks that I had to work but at least they got to have some fun while I worked. My my worry is that they'd be really bored all day so I'm glad they found something fun to do and I'm glad he documented all of it so I can see it and I'll just have to have to come back and I'll join them next time. We are now headed to Carlsbad, New Mexico where we'll be staying for the next two nights. So our original plan was to go to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and then Carlsbad Caverns National Park tomorrow and then on Sunday go to White Sands National Monument on our way to Tucson. But there's a government shutdown happening and we had hoped it would be resolved by this point but it's not. So tomorrow we're just going to do Guadalupe Mountains National Park and just go to a couple extra spots and then Sunday we're going to just go straight to Tucson and do some stuff there. So unfortunately we can't go to Carlsbad Caverns or White Sands but we'll have to just come back and do those together in a trip because we were really excited about them. We're trying really hard not to be bummed but not gonna lie I'm pretty bummed out but I'm trying to stay positive because I know we can come back in the future. But we actually are really sad to leave El Paso. El Paso kind of took us by surprise. Same with just like West Texas as a whole. We're kind of kicking ourselves for not spending more time here when we lived here. El Paso I feel like is kind of a hidden gem. There were some really cool coffee shops. The food's really good. Adam went to the Franklin Mountains State Park today and it looked awesome. I'm still very upset. So there's just quite a few things to do here. We weren't expecting it so we'll definitely be back. The hospitality was great so thank you El Paso for an awesome day and a half. We will miss you but we'll be back to visit you. We woke up to this this morning. It wasn't expecting this either. It's gonna be an interesting day. We got to a frigid Carlsbad, New Mexico last night. Even more frigid when we woke up this morning. When we woke up to like a light dusting of snow in the yard of the Airbnb we stayed at and on our car. And so now this morning we drove over to the far western end of Guadalupe Mountains National Park and we are at Salt Dunes Basin. I think that's what it's called. Something like that. Basically since we couldn't go to white sands we discovered that Guadalupe Mountains National Park has some sand dunes that looked similar. Not as cool but similar. So we thought we'd check it out first this morning. It's been like a really cloudy snowy morning. We saw a lot of snow on our drive which we're a little nervous about because we forgot our spikes. So for our hike later that should be interesting. We didn't really forget them let's be honest. We were like we don't need them we're going to Texas. So yeah it'll be an interesting day but we are the only ones here. This is probably one of the least visited national parks. I don't know its exact ranking but I do know it's one of the least visited. So no one's here. We'll have it to ourselves and we're gonna explore for a little bit and then go do our big hike and hopefully the weather clears up a little. If not this will be like the first day that maybe the weather's impacted anything. Yeah it's like 30-ish degrees right now but over at Guadalupe peak it's gonna be maybe lower than that. Maybe and it might be really windy. Yeah. So we're not super prepared in all honesty but it'll be fun. We're bundled up as much as we can be. So just to make it clear Guadalupe Mountains National Park is actually in Texas. So we drove back to Texas today even though we're staying in New Mexico because of the whole government shutdown we can't do any of the New Mexico stuff so we're staying in New Mexico for that reason but Guadalupe Mountains National Park is actually really close to the New Mexico border so you could either stay in El Paso and drive or stay in Carlsbad and drive. Either way is probably fine. I think you can camp here too but that's why we're back in Texas. We don't want to confuse anyone. This park is in Texas. We're back in Texas but we'll be back in New Mexico later. So it's about a mile walk out here to the dunes. The dunes are made out of gypsum and they grow about 0.008 to a third of an inch every year. And they're made from earthquakes and wind and water. Some range from like a couple inches and some are up to six feet I think. It's pretty cool to walk around. Overnight animals walk over them so you can see some of their tracks. We haven't found any yet but I've heard some like animals like fighting yeah like coyotes or something. So I'm gonna look around for some animal tracks and we're just gonna keep exploring and check it out. It's been super cool so far and it's really cool with the sand and the snow mixed. Yeah yeah it's the the snow makes it look more white like white sands but it's more like a golden. Yes but they're more golden and brown so super cool. So we're gonna keep checking it out. That was much cooler than I thought it would be. As we drove up you couldn't really see any of the sand and so I kind of started to get nervous like oh this looks like it might not be that cool. But you go over a hill and then there's just all the sand and it's actually like more white looking. It's gypsum sorry. It's actually more white looking than we thought originally. The snow on it made it look less white but by itself it's still pretty white. Yeah yeah so if you can't make it to white sands for whatever reason this is an excellent plan b. So definitely come check it out. It's one of the least popular national parks but we're enjoying it. We like it. Yeah we like having no one else around us. It's pretty awesome so far. We heard some coyotes or foxes howling earlier. Saw some prince. Hopefully they don't join us but yeah. Headed back to the car and then we're gonna go hike to Guadalupe Peak. Yep. I just want to add one more thing. I'm still laughing because a second ago you said the coffee chop. What? I did? So I got the discount.