Southern Exposure RV Trip

The year 2020 will be remembered for many bad things: the COVID-19 pandemic, toilet paper shortages, police brutality, and Black Lives Matter to name a few.  But before everything went askew in the world, we were able to take an unprecedented family vacation in February.  The reason for this early vacation was because Mia was going to be heading off to Wisconsin in March to begin a contract position with the Nicolet-Chequamegon National Forest.

Because this was a splurge year, we flew to Phoenix, Arizona and rented an RV on Outdoorsy to explore the Southwest.  This was our first time in an RV and also our first time visiting this part of the country.  Along the way, we visited five national parks and two national monuments in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.  This trip brings our national park tally to 31, which is over half of the parks in the National Park Service.

Carlbad Caverns National Park was everybody's number one highlight

Driving

The Southwest of the United States is big.  Actually, it's ginormous.  We just couldn't believe how many hours of driving it took to pretty much get anywhere in Texas.  In a little over a week, we put over 2000 miles onto the RV, averaging about 250 miles per day.  The following map is a sketch of our travels:

 

Hiking

Along with the 2000 miles of driving, we added about 30 miles of hiking (Carlsbad Caverns National Park isn't tallied in our total mileage, because GPS doesn't work underground.)  The map below has location prefixes as follows:

• BBNP: Big Bend National Park, Texas
• CNM: Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona
• GMNP: Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas
• LNF: Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico
• SNP: Saguaro National Park, Arizona
• TNF: Tonto National Forest (and Monument), Arizona
• WSNP: White Sands National Park, New Mexico

Here is a list of every hike we took in chronological order and a GPX file with all of these hikes 

Hike	Distance (miles)	Approx. Elev. Gain (ft)
SNP: King Canyon Trail	2.0	506
SNP: Mica View Trail	1.4	74
CNM: Echo Canyon Trail	3.4	614
BBNP: Santa Elena Canyon Trail	1.8	561
BBNP: Tuff Canyon Trail	1.1	135
BBNP: Lower Buffo Mesa Pouroff	1.2	109
BBNP: Sam Nail Ranch	0.4	37
BBNP: Boquillas Canyon Trail	1.4	169
GMNP: Pinery Butterfield Stage Station Ruins	1.2	292
GMNP: McKitrick Nature Trail	1.1	224
GMNP: Frijole Ranch / Smith Spring Trail	2.7	485
LNF: Osha Trail	0.6	187
WSNP: Playa Trail	0.4	194
WSNP: Interdune Boardwalk	0.5	26
WSNP: Dune Life Nature Trail	1.4	120
WSPN: Alkali Flat Trail	1.0	56
TNF: Tonto Lower Cliff Dwelling	1.7	468
TNF: Cemetery / Thompson Trail	2.3	456
TNF: Windy Hill Walk	1.5	103
TOTALS	27.3	4814

Highlights   

After visiting 7 National Parks and Monuments, here is how we ranked them all.  Amelia appeared to have the most representative ranking, as her list most closely matched the average ranking of each park.  Her only miss was swapping the two bottom ranked parks.  Raymond also swapped two parks compared to average ranking, but they were the #3 and #6 parks, oddly enough.  He ranked Guadalupe higher because he really enjoyed seeing the old Frijole Ranch and liked the setting of the Smith Spring Trail.

Order	Park	Mike	Suzanne	Amelia	Raymond	Average
5	Carlsbad Caverns NP	1	1	1	1	1
2	Chiricahua NM	3	2	2	2	2.25
3	Big Bend NP	2	3	3	6	3.5
7	Tonto NM	5	4	4	4	4.25
6	White Sands NP	4	7	5	5	5.25
4	Guadalupe NP	7	6	7	3	5.75
1	Saguaro NP	6	5	6	7	6

We didn't expect to see as much wildlife in the desert Southwest as we did.  Here is a list of what we spotted on our trip:

• Lots of deer
• Herd of bighorn sheep
• 2 bobcats
• 2 wild horses
• 2 vultures
• 2 acorn woodpeckers
• 1 wild burro
• 1 roadrunner
• 1 coatimundi
• 1 chipmunk
• 1 turtle
• 1 rabbit
• 1 lizard
• 1 wild boar (javelina) 
• coyotes (heard, but not seen

Photos

Here is a photo album of nearly 1000 pictures that Mike took with his phone during the trip.  There are also a handful of GoPro pictures and videos here, including videos and time lapse images of our driving and sledding (yes, sledding!) in White Sands National Park.