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The cool vintage sign that welcomed us to the Tumble In RV Park in Marfa, TX.
I originally planned on only posting this photo to our Facebook Page but then decided it would be a fine addition for here as well.
7 Reasons to Visit Marfa, TX
Presidio County Courthouse, Marfa, TX
Far removed from the typical tourist trail in west Texas, we discovered at least seven good reasons to take a detour to Marfa, TX.
It’s Artsy
Ever since the renowned minimalist sculptor Donald Judd made Marfa his home in the early 1970s, the area has been a magnet for the creatively inclined. Today, the town of just 1,981 residents boasts as many as 14 art galleries. Judd’s work, along with that of other contemporary artists, is still available for tour through the Chinati and Judd Foundations.
. . . and literary
Named after a character in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Marfa retains its literary legacy to this day. Over the past decade, the Lannan Foundation has housed close to 200 fellows in Marfa through its Writers in Residency program.
The wonderfully urbane Marfa Book Company in downtown draws the area’s artists and writers together. The bookstore and art gallery functions as a gathering place that routinely stages music, readings, talks and other performances.
Impulse Buy
Many a travel blogger have written eulogies for the much maligned travel guide. “The internet is better. It has more stuff. Reviews and details are actually up-to-date on the web. ‘Crowd sourced’ information is far better than anything a lone travel writer can put together. Guidebooks are for dorks.”
It’s all true, too. The internet is wonderful for researching specific things.
But for macro level travel planning, guidebooks are still hard to beat. Twenty minutes spent paging through a copy of DK’s Eyewitness USA guide gives us an amazing overview of the country’s primary and some secondary sights. Assembling the same information on the internet might take several days or more of painful hunting and pecking through narrowly focused travel sites. Who has time?
Guidebooks help us narrow our focus. They show us the main attractions in a region so we can plan a route. From there we use the internet to drill down into specifics.
With that in mind, I stopped by a local bookstore today to see if I could find a regional guide for the western leg of our trip. That’s not exactly what I walked out with.
Instead, I ended up buying a guide to Southeast Asia on impulse. Does this mean we’re heading to Thailand this winter? Not necessarily, but we now have an easy way to start organizing such a trip. That, together with the fantasies such planning usually stimulates, puts Southeast Asia at the top of the list for our next big excursion.
Stay tuned!
A Serendipitous Solar Eclipse
We don’t usually plan well enough to arrive in specific locations during special events. We always seem to just miss festivals and cool cultural goings on. So it was a little surprising when we discovered that our travels took us directly in the path of the first solar eclipse to hit North America since 1994.
We decided to stay a couple of extra days in Holbrook, AZ, so we could take in the event at Petrified Forest National Park. We’ll have a ton more to say about this park in future blog posts, but suffice it to say, there is far more here than just a bunch of rocks that used to be trees. It’s a surprisingly awesome national park and a terrific place to have watched this unusual occurrence.
Last night’s show was what is called an annular eclipse, which is a special type of partial eclipse. Unlike a total eclipse where the moon completely blots out the sun, in an annular the moon is far enough away from the earth that it leaves a visible ring of fire (and it burns, burns, burns.) It really does, too, if you stare at it with unprotected eyes.
Don’t Follow the Lights
Sam: “There are dead things, dead faces in the water.”
Gollum: “All dead. All rotten. Elves and men and orcses. A great battle long ago. The Dead Marshes. Yes, yes that is their name. This way. Don’t follow the lights.”
At first we thought they were car headlamps shining faintly across the vast expanse of the West Texas desert. Slowly they moved to the right, roughly in a row; four in all, until one of the middle lights went dark. The others followed suit, winking out in no particular order. Other lights appeared within the general vicinity, mostly white but also red and blue. Some drifted left. Others moved vertically or bounced around at random.
Reports of Marfa’s softly glowing mystery lights date back as far as the 1800’s, with rumors of even earlier sightings. They’ve been explained as everything from swamp gas, to the reflections of car headlamps, to UFOs. Some still maintain there is no explanation for the nocturnal apparitions.
If you find yourself in Marfa, TX, look to the south for an interesting show. But if you’re tempted to strike out in pursuit of the lights to uncover their mystery, know that miles of dangerous desert have long helped shield their secret. It’s probably best if you enjoy them from a distance and don’t follow the lights.
Everywhere Once 