We really enjoyed our brief stopover in Marathon Texas but it became time to move on and our next stop would be in Marfa Texas. Marfa is well known for the Marfa Lights.
"”The Marfa Lights, mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside the West Texas town of Marfa, have mystified people for generations. According to eyewitnesses, the Marfa Lights appear to be roughly the size of basketballs and are varyingly described as white, blue, yellow, red or other colors. Reportedly, the Marfa Lights hover, merge, twinkle, split into two, flicker, float up into the air or dart quickly across Mitchell Flat.”
We wondered if maybe we would see the Marfa lights?
Our park was the Tumble In RV Park which is a no frills park on the outside of town but it does have an interesting feature nearby that I’ll talk more about later in this blog. Marfa is a county seat and as such has a nice courthouse. The town is also known for being an arts hub and is a bit quirky as well.
We found a small disc golf course in Marfa to play. It had a limited number of baskets and a confusing layout of 18 holes. Even it was a quirky encounter. One that stopped Sharon in her tracks was what appeared to be a Mardi Gras mask buried on a mound of dirt. The course also had a few interesting mandatories (mandos) to challenge us and we had to smile when we saw some Christmas ornaments decorating the cacti as we played. It was fun.
Close to Marfa is another small Texas town called Fort Davis. We made the drive over to the National Historic Site to tour the fort and take a short 3 mile hike in the hills around it. With several steep climbs we were well above the fort giving us glimpses of what many soldiers and probably Indians may have seen over a 100 years ago.
The hike was scenic, reeked of history and was pretty well maintained. We really enjoyed this hike and as many of you may know about us, once we finish a hike we like to find a spot for a cold beer.
So back to Marfa where made time for a cold beer at the historic Paisano Hotel. It is well known because the entire cast of the movie Giant stayed here. People such as Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge and Dennis Hopper.were all there. Pictures taken on the movie set adorn the walls of the lobby and common areas so it was fun to admire them while walking through.
Now back to the Marfa Lights. Did we see them? No, we didn’t but we saw something we thought was cooler. They are called the Actual Contact or the Marfa Pillars. This artistic endeavor began as an idea first constructed at a Burning Man festival and later created in Marfa.
Actual Contact is art that is composed of twelve 10ft steel pillars arranged in a arch adjacent to our RV park so we were able to walk to it. Each 10ft pillar is inscribed with arcane symbols created by the artist Jason WA Tucker.
On each column there are two images, one on each side cut into the pillars.. Inside the pillars are lights that come on at night making the images brilliantly sharp. The illuminated images seemingly float above the desert floor in the dark of night. In the daytime they were simply brown columns with a faint outline of the images seen by day only up close..
So, in a way, YES, we did see the Marfa Lights and they were way cooler than we would have ever imagined.
We did not see the famous lights either, but totally missed the Paisano Hotel! Sounds like an interesting stop.
ReplyDeleteThere was definitely more in this little town that we expected.
DeleteI found the contrast between Marfa's old Courthouse and Actual Contact intriguing - pretty neat to find both in a small town. That artwork is creative and impressive.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, quite the contrast,
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