Don't Go Into The Lights

Since we were already there, we had to visit the Prada sculpture.  I saw a few pairs of shoes that were absolutely adorable. Good thing for me the store was never going to open.  Notice the President Trump head that was placed on the door.  There was a couple sitting across the street in beach chairs.  I could only assume that they were the ones that placed it there and just wanted to see the reactions of people that visited.  Kind of weird... but again, Marfa was kind of weird.

I learned about Marfa from a pinterest post that showed Beyonce in front of the Prada sculpture.  The Prada sculpture looks like a store in the middle of nowhere but never is open for business.  It does display actual Prada shoes and purses, which is a big deal for some of us.  But as much as I have a shoe fetish, this wasn't a compelling reason to visit Marfa.  I continued to read more about Marfa.   I learned about an artist, David Judd, who left New York to make Marfa his home and has installed much of his modern art there.  I also learned that you could camp in teepees, tents, trailers and a hammock grove at El Cosmico (a more compelling reason to go).  Then I read about the "mystery lights" of Marfa.  There are these lights that can be seen in the distance off of the 90 highway.  Research has been conducted but there still is no concrete evidence on why or how this phenomena occurs.  Now I had to go visit Marfa and see these lights for myself.  Some people have seen them in various colors, varying amounts and movements.  Some see little dots and others see glowing globes. What was I going to see??

Dakotah was a little peeved about the drive there.  Our GPS loves to do this thing where we take a long round-about way of getting to places.  I swear sometimes that the voice in the GPS is real and just loves to prank us by making us drive in circles.  We took the "scenic" route to get there-- not much to see.  

Marfa is a sleepy little town.  From this photo, you'd think that we just got there on a slow weekday.  We were actually there on a Saturday.  This photo was taken around 5pm and all of the stores were already closed.

There aren't very many places to stay in Marfa.  El Cosmico was booked so we stayed at the Thunderbird Motel, a swanky, minimalist-style hotel.  It had a small pool that was surrounded by beautiful desert-scape.  Across the street was their restaurant, The Capri, which was where we had to check in for our reservation as well.  When we checked in I was happy to see that they had a huge bar and was serving dinner that night.  Dinner was ridiculous.  Service sucked.  There were a couple of waiters walking around but you needed to seek their service rather than them asking you if you wanted to order anything.  We received a bar menu, which was two pages of various drinks (kind-of overwhelming), and a quarter sheet of a few listed appetizers, mains and a side.  I thought these were the specials so I asked the waiter for a menu and he responded with a bit of an attitude, "That IS the menu."  Okay, fine.  The problem was the only two mains on the menu were over $60.  So we ordered a charcuterie board and a cheese board, a couple of drinks and called it a day.

From what I read online, I was forewarned about the limited places to eat .  It was recommended to visit a grocery store before we reached Marfa.  I honestly didn't think it would be a problem since we were going to be there during the weekend.

This is a picture of the Marfa lights that I found online.

We waited until dark to go and check out the Marfa lights.  There is a viewing platform about 15 minutes out from town.  When we walked onto the platform there were already lots of people lined up looking out into the horizon.  There were a couple of them talking aloud saying things like, "It just moved,"  "There is three of them now,"  "Those just split into two."  We looked out and couldn't figure out what they were looking at.  We sat on a bench behind everyone to try and figure it out.  Finally, I just decided to ask the stupid question to a group on the platform, "What are we looking at?"  They pointed out the lights in the distance that I thought were streetlights.  Apparently, we were looking in the direction to an area that has no streetlights, buildings, and roads-- just vast empty land.