Guadalupe Mountains: Williams Ranch

[This post describes things that occurred before the interruption.]

On my last day at the Guadalupe Mountains, I joined a ranger-guided drive (in a 4WD high-clearance van) to the Williams Ranch, an outpost on the south side of the park that is 11 miles over a bumpy road, at the base of the mountains. This was a poorly-promoted first attempt at this sort of thing, attended only by myself and the German couple I met at the summit of Guadalupe Peak (whom I had told about it). We spent about 1.5 hours bumping along the road, stopping at a few places along the way (see e.g. the eagle pictures from an earlier post), and then arrived at the abandoned ranch house. The NPS has restored the exterior of the house, but not yet done anything of substance to the interior. Becuase we had the ranger along, we were able to get in! The original settler of this ranch was from Louisiana. Some of the backing of the wallpaper was old New Orleans newspapers (sorry no dates, but they say the house was built in 1907, making it not much older than my house back in Somerville...)