Planning Your Time

Guadalupe in One Day

Start your tour at Headquarters Visitor Center, also known as the Pine Springs Ranger Station, where an exhibit and slide show introduce the park's plants, wildlife, and geology. Nearby is the 0.75-mile, round-trip, wheelchair-accessible Pinery Trail, which rambles to the Pinery Butterfield Stage Station ruins. As you take in the sights, do not touch the ruins' fragile walls; the site is quite vulnerable. Next, head to the Frijole Ranch History Museum, housed in a vacated yet well-preserved ranch home built in 1876.

Once you're done exploring the shaded grounds and admiring the labor that built the compound, turn onto the trailhead behind the ranch house for the 0.2-mile stroll to the calming waters of Manzanita Spring, one of two watering holes that gurgle within a couple of miles of the museum. Park staff call such areas riparian zones. These oases supply the fragile wildlife here, and can sometimes look like Pre-Raphaelite paintings, with mirrored-surface ponds and delicate flowers and greenery.

Afterward, pay a visit to the famed McKittrick Canyon. Regardless of the season, the dense foliage and basin stream are worth the hike—though it's best to visit it in late October and early November when the trees burst into color. There isn't a direct route, but you can get here quickly by driving northeast from the visitor center on U.S. 62/180. Follow it to the gate at the McKittrick turnoff, which is locked at sunset. Head northwest through the gate (ignoring the service road) in your car, and you'll arrive at the canyon.

Take your time walking the McKittrick Canyon Trail, which leads to Pratt Lodge, or the strenuous but rewarding 8.4-mile Permian Reef Trail, which takes you up thousands of feet, past monumental geological formations. Or traverse the easy, short (less than 1 mile) McKittrick Canyon Nature Loop.