Merry Christmas from the Grunwalds!

Lincoln National Forest: Grandview Trail

After lunch at the Texas Pit Barbeque Robby, Lee and I headed down the west side of the mountains towards High Rolls where we picked up the Grandview Trail. Like the Salado Canyon Trail which Noelle and I hiked to Bridal Veil Falls in May, the Grandview Trail followed an old railroad grade.

The hiking was pretty easy and we made our way through an old rock-cut to a view that was, indeed, grand.

We rested in the small shelter there for a few minutes and then returned to the trail.

Soon we crossed a fence using a stile

and made our way to the road, which we walked back to the car.

Sacramento Mountains South Highpoint

I finally got out of the house for some hiking adventure today! My friends Lee and Robby stopped by this morning and then we loaded up my car for a drive up into the mountains. We stopped in Artesia at the Chaos Cafe for a delicious breakfast and then headed west on US-82 to Cloudcroft. As we headed up into the mountains we were treated to views of snow! From Cloudcroft we headed south towards Sunspot, but turned off and headed towards Timberon before reaching the solar observatory. We drove a snowy county road (the trees were adorned in frosty splendor)

to the well-marked Corral Canyon Trailhead where we parked and prepared for our journey.

From the trailhead, we proceeded up a snow covered  Corral Canyon.

We saw lots of animal tracks in the fresh snow including elk and deer tracks. We followed the Corral Canyon Trail up to Forest Road 64 and turned right on the surprisingly plowed road.
The hiking on the road was easy.

We followed it for about 3/4 mile and then headed off-trail. I had found the GPS coordinates and entered them into my GPS unit. We used the Garmin to find the vicinity of the summit. We took a group photo at what we first thought was the summit: a green post stuck into the frozen earth.

I had doubts about the post marking the actual highpoint tough, and so I searched around for a cairn I had read existed.

After about 5 minutes I found the cairn and dug through a little bit of snow to find a summit register. I called the others over to my location and we all signed the register and then replaced it into the cairn which hugged the side of a tree trunk.

After a few minutes at the summit we began our descent.

It was a quick, slippery hike back to the car. Along the way we saw some elk and turkeys.

After returning to the car we decided to give the Sacramento Mountians North Highpoint a try. We drove the Sunspot Road to Forest Road 233. Unfortunately, we found the road to be too snow covered for safe travel in my Civic and so we turned around after driving the road for about 1/8 mile. The northern high point will just have to wait.

Exploring Old El Paso

Noelle and I had been wanting to eat at Cattleman's Steak House and check out a few sites in El Paso that we had never been to before for some time now. Today, we finally got our chance to head south. Robby came over for breakfast burritos smothered with green chile sauce and at about 11:30 we finally hit the road. It was a long drive down to El Paso and we stopped at Kohl's and Target so that Noelle could return something and we could get some snacks. From our short shopping excursion we headed to our first adventure stop: Concordia Cemetery.

At Concordia we explored the Chinese section of the cemetery

and also found the grave of the notorious John Wesley Hardin.

Perhaps most interesting was the section of graves of Buffalo Soldiers from Fort Bliss.

After walking the roads within the cemetery

we were ready to move on the the Mission Trail. The first stop on the Mission Trail was the Ysleta Mission.
We walked around the mission

and were even able to go inside for a peek.

From Ysleta, we drove the Mission Trail to Socorro Mission.

Again we got out of the car and walked around a bit,

but the Socorro Mission was closed when we arrived so we were not able to see the inside. From Socorro we drove to the final stop on the Mission Trail: San Elizario Presidio Chapel.

The area around the chapel seemed quite interesting.

After our adventure on the Mission Trail it was on to the famous Cattleman's Steakhouse.

We enjoyed a great meal at Cattleman's, but decided we must return at some point to check out the grounds surrounding the restaurant.

It was dark when we arrived, but San Elizario was, in my opinion, the most interesting of the three missions.

The Grunwald's Christmas Tree Hunting Trip 2012

Yesterday I went to the Forest Service office in Carlsbad and picked up a permit to cut down a Christmas Tree.

Last year we drove up to Cloudcroft where we cut down a Douglas fir. This year it would be a pinyon pine as there aren't any firs or spruces in the Guadalupe Ranger District. We loaded up the car and made the drive through the low desert and then up into the forest.

Our first stop was Forest Road 54 where we parked on a side road. Noelle fed Sierra there while I unsuccessfully looked for a decent tree.

From there we backtracked and then headed up Forest Road 540 to 540B. We parked along the side of FR 540B, ate lunch and then headed out to look for a tree.

The pickings were slim, but eventually I found this nice pinyon just off the side of the road. We took a family photo at our Christmas tree

and then I cut it down.

I realized it was heavier than we had thought it would be, so we went back to get the car and drove the car to the tree. I loaded up on top and used the tie downs I had bought yesterday.

They worked out well. Soon we were on the road to home to set the tree up.