Texas and New Mexico: 4 Parks in 7 Days

 When your spouse has a business trip within 3-5 hours of 4 of America’s National Parks, you take advantage of that open window of opportunity. Here’s how we turned Evan’s 3 day business trip into a 7 day National Park trip. 

Day 0: Ohio to Texas

    We took a Friday afternoon flight from Ohio to Texas. We had a 2.5 hour flight to Dallas-Fort Worth followed by a 1 hour flight to Odessa. We left our house around noon eastern time and were situated in our hotel in Texas around 9pm central time. We went straight to bed as we had a 5 hour drive ahead of us the next morning to our first destination. 

Day 1: White Sands National Park, New Mexico

    It took us a little over 5 hours to get to White Sands National Park. We left around 8am central time and arrived in White Sands at 1pm mountain time. (So many time zones.) We stopped in the visitor center and then made our way into the park to find a place to play in the sand. You really don’t have to hike in this park. Just stop at any of the parking lots and find a spot to hang out for a few hours!

White sand for as far as you can see

Day 2: Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico and Guadalupe Mountains, Texas

    We had a 3 hour 15 minute drive from our hotel in Alamogordo to Carlsbad Caverns. We had a timed entry reservation for the cavern for 10:30am. We chose to hike down and take the elevator back up. It took us about 2 hours to explore the cavern. When we were done, we had lunch in the visitor center cafe and made our way to Guadalupe Mountains. 

Pictures do not do the cavern justice

    Guadalupe Mountains is only a 45 minute drive from Carlsbad Caverns. We went to the Pine Springs Visitor Center. An interesting thing that happens when you are in Guadalupe Mountains is your phone will change the time back to central time, however, the park is technically still in the mountain time zone. When we arrived we thought we had just missed the visitor center closing, but turned out we still had an hour! 

Guadalupe Mountains

    Since Evan had to be back for the business trip part of our adventure on Monday morning, we did not get to explore Guadalupe Mountains as much as we had hoped. It’s about 3 hours from Guadalupe Mountains to Odessa, so we did not do any hikes. We chose to take in the visitor center and stopped at Frijole Ranch. 

Frijole Ranch

Day 3 and 4: Odessa, Texas

    While Evan was at work I spent time in the hotel and exploring Odessa as much as I was willing to solo. I found a couple nice parks to sit and enjoy the Odessa sunshine and an interesting used book store called, Ye Old Bookworm. I also went to the “must see” Stonehenge Replica at the University of Texas. 

Stonehenge replica at University of Texas

Day 5 and 6: Big Bend, Texas

    Wednesday morning we made the 4 hour drive from Odessa to Big Bend. Our goal was to get to the Rio Grande Village. We stopped at the Fossil Discovery Center and the Persimmon Gap and Panther Junction Visitor Centers on the way. When we made it to the Rio Grande Village we parked at the Boquillas Canyon Trail and took in the view of the river that separates the United States and Mexico. 

The Rio Grande separating the United States and Mexico

    On our way back to our lodging in Alpine, we stopped at the Chisos Basin and did the short Window View Trail. There was a longer version of this trail, but I felt that the Window View was just enough to give us a taste of what this area of the park had to offer.

The Window View

    The second day in Big Bend, we drove to Santa Elena Canyon and did the trail to the river. We spent 2 hours there hiking and playing in the river. This was definitely my favorite part of the park and the trip overall. The canyon was beautiful and being so close to the border of another country just felt surreal. I loved Santa Elena Canyon. 

Rio Gande between the Santa Elena Canyon

The Santa Elena Canyon

    After our time in the canyon, we had one last drive back to Odessa Texas. We drove 4.5 hours back to Odessa so we could fly back home the next morning. 

Day 7: Texas to Ohio

    After a busy, but fun week it was time to go back home! I can’t believe we were able to see as much as we did and I am so glad we took advantage of Evan already being in the area for work and making an adventure out of it.