If you aren’t a die-hard National Park visitor, or are not from the Texas/New Mexico area, I expect you may be wondering what this park, Guadalupe Mountains, is. Receiving just 172,000 visitors in the last report, it gets just 1% of the number of visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Most of those visitors will arrive the way we did, along Highway 180 between El Paso, TX and Carlsbad, NM.
Located just 25 miles west of Carlsbad Caverns, these parks are great to pair together into one visit. I’d suggest a day for each park as the minimum time to plan for and let Carlsbad take your priority as your ability to get an entrance ticket here is the most challenging part. We rented a home in Carlsbad, NM so we weren’t too far from either park.
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