Texas to New Mexico: Marfa to Las Cruces

 29 April 2022

We left early to head to Marfa; it was one of the stops in Texas that I had requested. Dan said I could do whatever I could do but I only had an hour to an hour and a half. It took 30 minutes to find the Visitor Center closed for a private event and the cool Chamber of Commerce building locked up tight. I directed 

Dan to the Chinati Foundation—I was hoping to be able to “power tour” myself through the sculptures in the field but since I hadn’t signed up for a tour (not enough time), I wasn’t allowed to go take photos on my own. Understandable…but so sad since it was still early and the shadows on the geometric shapes would’ve been…great.

In the meantime, we drove through town and Dan stopped at the end of town so I could take a photo of the Presidio County Courthouse. And the water tower. My favorite photo of the day was the “Giant Marfa” paintings west of town. We were able to stop and get photos….not so for the Prada store further along the road out of town. Damn. That was one of the things I wanted to see!  And I did, as we flew by.

Never again will I “go see someplace” with that kind of time constraint on me! Yes, I saw it, but only as someone who drover through would see it. *sigh*

We completed the PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir audiobook today—we both enjoy Andy Weir on audio. Fun book if you like science, smarty-pants main characters, aliens and plot twists.

GIANT with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean was filmed in the Marfa area in the 1950s. These paintings on giant plywood cutouts, completed in October 2018, are by John Cerney and are title GIANT MARFA. They were awesome and the best thing from our “drive by”!

Border Patrol

As we were on our way from Marfa to El Paso, we saw this white thing in the sky. I guessed it was Border Patrol, using a large drone but we were going 60 mph and we weren’t gaining on it.  How fast do drones fly?? We were on the road and running parallel to the road was train tracks. The object was overflying the train tracks but eventually it crossed over the road and I got some pictures of it. We both said that it looked like a blimp—and it WAS! (The actual name of this is an aerostat) I did a quick Google search while Dan was driving and found out that in January of this year, Congress appropriated over $52 million for blimps to be used in border patrol activities. There was a picture of one and it looked JUST LIKE the photos of the blimp we’d been following!

For more on the Border Patrol blimps: Border Blimps

Besides the BP blimp, we saw Border Patrol patrol cars on the road from the time we left Terlingua. Buildings that had Border Patrol signage were noted in most towns we passed through. We passed a Border Patrol checkpoint on eastbound I-10 in the El Paso area. We saw a vehicle on the side of the road running linked chains over the dirt on the side—to erase footprints on the pathway. I would guess that the US Border Patrol along the southern border with Mexico has to be the second biggest employer after healthcare in the region!

We made a trip to Albertsons in Las Cruces to supplement our supplies and tomorrow we will be up early to drive over to White Sands National Monument for some hiking and exploration. Stay tuned!