McKittrick Canyon

One of my favourite hikes of our entire trip was the one to McKittrick Canyon in Guadalupe NP. It was a fairly warm and windy day so I figured it would be a great day to be out of the wind inside a canyon. That worked fairly well, but the we could certainly feel the wind for the first 30 minutes of the trail until the canyon deepened. Because the trail was so good, we figured it was going to be pretty easy to access the plateau and it was, but the traverses were so long and flat, we actually did decide to give up 3/4 of the way up - we could see how windy it was. Came back to this spot called Grotto for lunch - these picnic tables and benches are made out of slabs of stone. It was a really beautiful spot in the canyon. We only saw 3 other people on the trail and managed to find a few spotted towhees along the route, but nothing really out of the ordinary in the birding department. We startled one smallish mammal who went into a small cavelike shelter and we're pretty darn sure that it was a skunk.