Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Pre-Departure: Ft. Davis, TX

Hi everybody! Only 33 days until I leave for Zaragoza, Spain. I miss all my Norman friends but Christmas in Dallas was great.
My family and I just got back from Ft. Davis (near Marfa) in far west Texas. We saw the stars at the McDonalds Observatory and about a zillion cactuses everywhere else. Seriously. It was out of control. We also drove through the lovely community (not big enough to be a town) of Saragosa, Texas, site of the 3rd deadliest tornado in Texas history. I wanted to get a picture so I could compare it to the original Zaragoza later but my dad wouldn't stop. He didn't want to miss the killer bird watching in Balmorhea Springs...

The best part of our trip by far was driving 70 miles through the Chihuahua desert to see Prada Marfa, an art installation of a fake Prada storefront over 30 miles from the nearest gas station. Here's me and Lydia checking out the merch.

West Texas is kind of a weird place. We passed through a lot of dying towns, and then all of a sudden there's Marfa, a thriving hipster/arts community. The weirdest part was this blimp we saw. We saw it once on a hike in Ft. Davis National Park, over the southern horizon. Apparently it's tethered in place out between Marfa and Valentine as a National Security measure. It looks for planes coming in over the southern border. When we passed it on the way to Prada it was landed on the ground so we got an up close look.