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Guadalupe Mountains & White Sands National Parks

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Continuing my post-Christmas Texas/New Mexico park extravaganza, Felix and I headed to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. This park is in Texas right on the border to New Mexico. Also, this park is in Mountain Time but it's right on the border to central time so my phone was constantly switching time zones and I never knew what time it was... The most popular hike in Guadalupe Mountains is to hike to Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. That hike is 8.5 miles with 3,000 ft of elevation gain. I said "no thank you" to that hike, and instead, we started with another popular activity in the park: hiking to the Devil's Hall. This trail is 4.2 miles and takes you through a wash with lots of big boulders. It was a fun rock scramble.  The destination of the hike is a rock staircase and a canyon with steep walls forming a "hallway". I thought the rocks were pretty cool.  Next we stopped at the Pine Springs visitor center which has a short hike to the ruins of ...
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Big Bend & Carlsbad Caverns National Parks

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The week of Christmas, I headed to California to spend the holidays with my family (as I typically do). Felix, my parents, and my brother spent some time in San Francisco prior to Christmas. I finally got taken for a sail on the family boat! It's certainly not a boat I'd like to own (has a leak), but we had a nice time on the bay.  Other SF activities included going to the Exploratorium, and seeing not one, but two circus shows! We saw Dear San Francisco , a resident show by the group Seven Fingers, and Echo , a touring show by Cirque Du Soleil. I wasn't a huge fan of Dear San Francisco-- it's a show in a small theater where they do things like read poetry while doing circus. That's just not my thing. I like big spectacle, which is what Echo had so I thought it was great.  My family Christmas occurred as usual. Many gifts were exchanged between humans and cats. Good Chinese food was had. That's not really what this blog is about.  The day after Christmas, Felix ...
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