This was a national park in the El Paso region so a visit was definitely in order, just to mark it off as visited. It was #119 for me.

There really is not much to see in this park. I arrived a bit before sunrise. There were dozens and dozens of dozens of trucks and campers and trailers and cars and SUV's everywhere, parked side by side. Presumably people were sleeping in them. My arrival with headlights beaming and rolling over the graveled area and simply an engine running in the otherwise quiet probably woke a few of those overnight campers. I snapped a few photos, particularly of the sunrise, including from both entrances, then off to nearby Carlsbad Caverns I went. Strangely, although these two parks are less than half an hour's drive from each other, they are in two different times zones and states.

The drive to get here was rather unusual. I left El Paso shortly after 3:00 am, expecting to drive just over 100 miles in the dark along a lonely two-lane highway at 45 MPH so as to be ready to stop for deer. That was far from reality. First, El Paso itself went for 15 - 20 miles with a street-lighted four-lane highway. Then much of the rest of the highway to Gualalupe had a third lane (sometimes eastbound and sometimes westbound) for passing. The speed limit was 75 MPH. And there were dozens and dozens of guys in their large pickup trucks who were zooming along at 75 MPH. When I saw them coming in my rearview mirror, I pulled off the road onto the wide shoulder to let them pass. Earlier in the trip I had noticed that many pickup trucks had those ramming bars across their front like I have seen on many vehicles of the highway patrol and some city police cars. Then it occurred to me that maybe these pickup trucks have the bars to minimize damage in case they strike a deer. So no wonder they would roll along at 75 MPH.

To top off the drive, I had to, for the second time on this trip, go through a Border Patrol checkpoint. There are dozens and dozens of cameras on both sides of highway checking out the vehicles. Only on one side do they make traffic stop, the other side only gets photographed (which I had passed through that side on two other occasions, the first time I had no idea what it was but figured it out after the first Border Patrol checkpoint stop. All the guy does is look at you (profiling?), glance to see what is in the vehicle, then say either "have a nice day" or "are you American?". No licence showing needed. I guess that system must somehow help, or at least make some people think it somehow helps.