Marfa, TX

---

After a long day traveling through Big Bend, we decided to see local or near local stuff. In West Texas local is 90 miles or so, heck folks out here have to travel 90 miles to go to the grocery store. So with that in mind we did the "local stuff". First we set off to see one of the items we had on our bucket list...a faux Prada store in the middle of nowhere. Now don't laugh, it is so ridiculous, that it has to be seen to be believed and it was worth the trip. It's a little like another of our other bucket list items checked off in 2013, the Cadillac ranch. Both are fun to see as a unique art statements. The "store" sits a couple miles outside the tiny almost ghost town named Valentine (pop 215), I don't believe that many folks live there. There is no other town within 25 miles of it, amazingly it remains unmolested. Behind the store, people attach locks to the fence to represent their love and there are hundreds of locks along the fence. It's a small piece in the fabric of the American experience and we are happy to have seen it. The next item on the list was this strange white UFO that we have seen everywhere we have driven over the past few days. I called it the UFO and Mi Hyon said it's a weather balloon, it is huge and omnipresent on the horizon...well mystery solved today. It wasn't a weather balloon or a UFO, it is a Tethered Aerostat Radar System, used to track moving objects over hundreds of square miles. It has a 1 inch in diameter Kevlar tether and stations at 15,000 feet. The blimp and its amazing support facility sit along the road outside Marfa. We then, drove around the small town of Marfa, which allegedly has been invaded by throng of famous minimalist artists...we didn't see any but hear they are there if you look hard enough. It is a cute tiny town, with several very big churches. We took pictures of a few but there were just too many to get them all. On the way back to Alpine, we stopped by the Marfa Lights observation station, a cool round building overlooking Mitchell Flats east of Marfa. The Marfa lights, AKA the ghost lights, are mysterious and unexplainable, but we didn't have the energy to come back to see them after dark. We closed out the day back in Alpine, at the Sul Ross State University's Big Bend Museum. A really nice sequential history display covering a timeline from prehistoric, early native American settlements, Spanish conquistadors, the settlers, to modern times. It was very nicely done, with artifacts dating throughout the history. To finish the display off, they had Hos Cartwright's 10 gallon hat. It was a fun "local" 160 mile round trip. Tomorrow it'll be Roswell to see the real UFO display ;-)

---

Photos

Faux Prada Store
This was actually high on my list to see, in part because it is so unbelievable...Art they say and I guess it is.

Prada Marfa
What you see behind the "store" is all you can see for miles. A couple bus and cars loads of folks came by to take a fast picture and leave. We explored a little more.

Adjacent Town to Prada Marfa
I doubt the population numbers as most of the buildings are abandoned.

Long Train
There are really long trains out here, seems like miles long.

Marfa Lights
The Marfa Lights viewing area.

Comments

[Julie Deen]

Locks
Were you able to actual buy stuff at the Prada store? In St. Augustine there is a bridge walkway to the beach that is full of locks. Tim and I wondered what they meant. I bet it is the same thing, locks of love! Too bad you didn't have one to put on the fence while there!

[Mike and Mimi]

Prada
No, you can’t purchase anything, it’s just an art display. It’s never open as a store.