The next morning we decided to leave the White’s City campground and drive down to Guadeloupe National Park and take our chances on finding an RV space there big enough to handle the Big Sky rather than spend another night in the rundown White’s City campground. On arriving on Guadalupe NP, we found that the RV “campground” was really an enlarged parking lot with painted signs on the pavement indicating where individual RV sites were at. It felt strange to be parking in the middle of a parking lot, but what the heck -- this would be fine for one night. Actually, since they had no hook ups, it didn’t matter where they were putting us and indeed, since the setting around the campground was so pretty, even being in a parking lot was nicer than being in the rundown White’s city campground. After setting up and having lunch, we dropped by the visitors center to find out more information about the available hikes. 
The ranger there and two of the visitors strongly recommended that we take the hike to McKintrick Canyon to observe the fall foliage. Unfortunately, the hike up the canyon was a 2-4 hour round trip hike which had to be completed before the road was closed at 4:30. As it was already 1:30, we jumped in the truck and dashed up there to get as much of the hike in as we could before they closed.The praise for this hike was certainly warranted, as we saw the best foliage we had seen on our adventure to date. It was surprising to see maple trees down here in Texas, but apparently they are left over from an earlier climatic period when this area was much cooler. The hike along the canyon floor was highlighted with maple trees
showing yellow, orange and red foliage at various spots along the way. While it was not up to New England standards, it was certainly pretty. We were startled, however, to read in the literature that the McKintrick Canyon was considered by many Texans to be the most beautiful spot in the entire state. We guess that means it’s only downhill from here!!!! There were several highpoints on this hike in addition to the fall foliage. One was visiting the cabin deep in the canyon which had been built by the individual who later donated this canyon to the park service for part of their national parks. A lovely little cottage built of native stone, including a roof made of stone slabs and an outside table made of a 4 foot by 10 foot stone slab. Another highlight was coming across a tarantula crossing the trail in front of us. Once Jo recovered from her shock, she was in hog heaven taking multiple pictures of the tarantula that could have cared less about our presence. The final highlight of the 
hike was Jo’s stamina – she was feeling so much better than she has for weeks, or even months, and was able to keep a fast pace and climb up and down the slopes much better than she has been able to do on any hikes so far on our great adventure. This had us wondering whether and to what extent some of the discomfort she has been feeling for a number of weeks now might be due either to an adverse reaction to the injections she has been taking or might be due to the possibility that the medicine was damaged/frozen when our refrigerator was acting up several weeks earlier. In any event we have our fingers crossed that the good shape she is in now will continue as we continue on our great adventure.
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