While we were boondocking outside of Carlsbad Caverns (see post here), the kids and I still wanted to spend some time exploring Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We’re still trying to figure out where the kids’ limit is in terms of comfortably-distanced day hikes. We want them to enjoy the hikes, but also challenge themselves a bit. They are now required to carry their own water / snacks / cameras / stuffies etc, so we try to keep that in mind as well. If we have a whole day, ~5 miles is probably the sweet spot. Honestly, though, we rarely take the whole day because we have other things to do as well – school in the mornings being the most pressing. Â When I’m looking for easy day hikes now, I tend to aim for the 3-mile mark.
For our time in the Guadalupe Mountains, we decided to the Smith Spring Trail and tack on the walk around the Frijole Ranch after. According to my watch, with the additional wandering we did, this put us pretty close to 3 miles and that worked perfectly for our afternoon. It was a pretty easy trail for the kids to tackle, but it was at least interesting. The trail was a loop so the scenery changes kept the kids engaged. We had a nice view of the mountains heading in (less than 400ft elevation climb) and then there’s a beautiful shaded section near the spring.
Because we had completed the Junior Ranger program information the day before, we had some really interesting discussions about the mountain formations coming from an ancient coral reef (rather mind-blowing for the kids to think about the fact that they were walking on an ancient ocean floor). Once we got to the springs, our conversation wondered to battles that took place over these springs, much the same way they had at Fort Bowie. It involved a different Apache Tribe, but it still caused a 30-year conflict between them and the US Government.
The Spring was quite beautiful. Owen has developed a bit of fascination with natural springs, so he was delighted to see another one. I’m sure there are plenty of other more dramatic hikes around the park, but for what we were looking for, this one fit the bill
