by laura beth

Texas! The furthest east we've made it in the moho. After last year's plans to visit family in Texas fell through, it feels good to finally make it. We flew through New Mexico and then made a quick tour through The West Texas Town of El Paso: Chamizal National Monument, Scenic Drive, the free Museum of Archeology Museum, the free National Border Patrol Museum, and Ysleta Mission (established in 1680 and still active!). Scenic Drive gives an impressive view of the expanse of El Paso and its sister town, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. These two cities sprawl out over a 320 square miles, with a combined population of over 2 million people. Huge. Even if there weren't a large fence separating the two cities, the line is clearly drawn by the building styles and colors.





The museums were a nice break from the heat, however the Border Patrol Museum gave off a subtle racist vibe. Most notably the miniature Border Patrol vehicle display, which used Homies to depict Mexican immigrants. Apparently I'm not the only one who felt this vibe: ABC news article.



We left El Paso, broke off Interstate 10 and headed south on highway 90 towards Marfa. This lonely highway is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and several of the towns sprinkled along it are tiny and semi-abandoned. Just before Marfa is a small ghosty town called Valentine. I really want to some back someday to visit and take some photos. One small run-down building caught my eye. The word BEER was printed on the front, and a large tree was growing through the front door.

Between Valentine and Marfa is a Prada Marfa, an art installation piece along the side of the highway in the form of a Prada storefront, containing actual Prada bags and shoes from the Fall 2005 collection. I like it because it's unusual, I don't like it because I don't think it falls in the category of real art. And I don't care about Prada. Anyhoo, pretty weird. We caught it just at sunset, and the sky was beautiful.

Marfa would be fun to visit again too. Apparently it's got quite an art scene, and several galleries. As it is we rolled into town just after dark, spent the night just outside of town, and left the next morning. The main reason we came was to see the Marfa Mystery Lights, or MML. The MML are balls of light that appear after dark just above the horizon. Earliest records of the lights go back to the late 1800's. There is a ton of conflicting information about the MML, but according to the literature at the viewing area (nine miles east of town), they are visible most nights of the year. This is desolate country, and there was no light other than the moon, stars, a couple of red railroad lights. We watched for about an hour, straining in the dark, hoping to catch a glimpse of something mysterious. We saw several sets of headlights. Pretty soon some pink and orange flashes light up the horizon to the far left of the viewing area. We saw this over and over again. I was pretty sure it was just lightning, but didn't want to say anything out loud (there were several other groups of people there, and I didn't want to dash their spirits-they all thought it was the MML). I eventually went on to bed. However, Kenny stayed up and ended up seeing something altogether different than railroad lights, car headlights, and lightning.