Marfa, trail's end

We left the Big Bend Parks and headed north to Marfa. Coming into town, we passed the Marfa Lights Observatory, basically a fancy name for the highway rest stop. Sometimes "mysterious" lights glow on the horizon, "nobody" know what they are. Aliens, ghosts, flashes of natural gas ...? Well, gosh darn those physics students who popped the Chamber of Commerce balloon. The lights were car headlights reflecting off temperature gradients, similar to mirages. We didn't stop.

We settled into the "cool" Marfa Yacht Club campground. We were the only non-Airstream, but were accepted because we had a Tesla and a cute trailer. (Cute is the most common compliment we get.) We also had our Starlink antenna up, so we had great telecom. It is a very nice simple campground with only eight sites; we both really liked it. 

We tried to figured out how to see the major exhibits of Donald Judd. We weren't particularly aware of him prior to our visit. He bought a significant portion of the town, including an Army base (and 30,000 acres way outside of town, not open to the public) to display his large sculptures on permanent exhibition. Consequently he put Marfa "on the art map".

Naively, we thought we could just get tickets and wander. Need to have reservations, only a handful of guided tours (all less than 12 people, some had a max of four) three days a week, and they were mostly sold out. No wandering (with one exception) permitted! No interior photos, too.

Despite the sellouts, we eventually got to see most of the tours due to cancellations, no shows, and Barbara being politely persistent. I won't try to describe them; go to https://chinati.org/ and https://juddfoundation.org/visit/marfa/. The scale of the art is huge. The concrete structure pictured at https://chinati.org/collection/ is considered one piece of art stretching a full kilometer.

Part of the "15 concrete Structures"

Judd had several "Homage to the Square" by Josef Albers in his personal collection. The docent discussed the precise layering of varying colors of paint, and that these were noted on the back of his paintings. This reminded me of the White Shaman rock art that the Witte Museum cares for. The paint is applied in very specific sequences, even when" it make no sense" (see last paragraph of this link, if you care).


We went to see the Prada Marfa, a “pop architectural land art project", just because it is so unexpected.


Has Real Prada Shoes

It is surrounded by miles of empty ranchland. It is not in Marfa, but in the sad little town of Valentine, about 30 miles west of Marfa.








Most houses were occupied and in better condition. The school looked like it had got a lot of state funding. The biggest "business" is sending Valentines in February. I read somewhere that almost the whole town helps out canceling stamps with the special postmark. However, we could not find the Post Office.


We've been watching Texas movies when we have good connectivity. We just watched Giant, a 3+ hour epic with Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. It was filmed near Marfa. The movie was inspired by the King Ranch.




And just like that, there they were larger than life as roadside art. A solar-powered sound station played songs from the movie. No signs, just the figures alongside the highway. This must have been the movie set, as behind them were a few iconic pieces: the very rusty windmill, the ranch gate to "Little Riata", and a partial old oil well.

The Hotel Paisano, where all the crew and actors stayed, still features its five minutes of fame.


We continued on to McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis.

Yet Another Trivial Accomplishment

Not the actual high point of Texas, but the highest point one can drive to -- 6791 feet.

Great views, some big observatory buildings that we weren't allowed into (not surprised, covid), and a very pleasant drive around the mountain.

Gallery opening times in Marfa seem "flexible". Several of the galleries said they were open Wed-Sat with normalish hours, but they weren't.

We happened to go by the highest golf course in Texas -- 4,882 feet. It was closed (for the winter?). I have no idea how they water it, or most likely they don't. We haven't seen any green grass anywhere once we got to West Texas.




We had a nice day trip to Alpine, about 26 miles east of Marfa.

We visited the Sul Ross University Museum of the Big Bend, which happened to coincide with their annual cowboy poetry event. We seemed to be the only folks not attending.

The museum is proud of their work with the Tall Rock Shelter. They have a full sized reproduction on display.

The small museum covered Big Bend from pre-historic ancient times to cowboys and Buffalo Soldiers. A small map exhibit showed the wildly different borders for the Texas Republic (1836-1846). Some showed Texas went all the way to Pacific Ocean and 42˚ North. (Chicago and the present northern border of California are on the 42˚ parallel) Other maps showed Texas considerably smaller than the present day state.

While almost wore masks in Marfa, almost nobody did at Sul Ross. On the other hand almost all the guys wore cowboy hats. Nobody had both a hat and a mask. Barbara did her best, but he had no ears.

We stumbled on the Arts District of Alpine. There were many more murals, telephone poles, and columns decorated. Very fun.

The Petit Bijoux Bar was a very friendly wine bar we enjoyed.

Even a dumpster!

Not for tourists. They let Pemba and me in, anyway.

Some of y'all may have been wondering where we've been. Here is our approximate route from Brownsville to Marfa (the red pointer). 

You can see that Comstock, Marathon, Alpine, Marfa, and Valentine are all on US-90, right next to the Union Pacific Railroad. A hundred and fifty years after the railroad was built, trains rumble along all night and day on the single rail. Away from the rails and highway, there is just about nothing. The only active Amtrak station out here is Alpine.

This is the end of the trail, metaphorically. We plotted out nearly the whole trip west, campground by campground, before we left Maine. Marfa is where we turn around and  now we "race" back to the island. New adventures ahead.

Happy Trails,

Krem and Barbara