Southwest Adventure

 According to Mona Blocker Garcia, the Presidio County Historian, every single important army general passed through, and stayed at Fort D. A. Russell, just outside of Marfa, and next door to the Chinati foundation site. Her favorite was General George S Patton. This is the corner of the bar in the Officer's Club where he stood and held court with 8 oz glasses of whisky. She instructed me to stand there and pretend to be Patton. This is his bed (and Mrs Garcia) where she made me lie down so I could see how tall Patton was. (6' 3" according to our guide) She also showed us the toilet he used, and she said "Many men want to use that toilet." Luckily, she  didn't insist on that part of the tour. Inside "Building 98" (which she owns, fee simple) German POWs from the Afrika Corp were housed. She claimed that Patton insisted on an artist so they could paint these mural inside the building. They toured the countryside with US Army Officers to get ideas, th...

 Donald Judd created a foundation to buy land and display art in West Texas called The Chinati Foundation. He started buying land around Marfa in 1978, with help from the DIA Foundation. But you can look that up yourself, if you want. We know some people involved with the foundation, and so we were able to get access to the grounds of this big (300+ acre) site when they are usually closed. As Doreen said, it is not because we are important, but we know important people. The site was originally a US Calvary barracks. There are many (70) buildings, some of which have been renovated and are being used as display spaces, some are offices, some are empty. It looks like this when you walk up. (We walked from town. This is probably not advisable in the summer heat, but it wasn't a bad mile or so for us) There are admonishments. We were told that people had been performing naked yoga inside the sculptures. That must have been uncomfortable. There are 60 installations over a one kilometer p...

 Marfa is the one town in Texas that the Coastal Elites love. They love the Donald Judd artwork and foundation, they love the lack of restaurants (so they can prove they are elite by walking in without a reservation), they love the galleries, and they love the thumb in the nose of all of the rest of Texas. That being said, it is actually a pretty nice little place. If you have ever seen anything from Marfa, it is probably one of two things. The Prada Marfa installation: Or the Marfa Lights (later) Prada Marfa is what you see above. An apparent Prada store plunked down in the middle of the West Texas desert, 37 miles outside of Marfa. No, it is not a real store. Marfa itself looks like this: Not sure if this is the inspiration for the lyric in the Lyle Lovett/Robert Earl Keen song, "This Old Porch" but it works for me. The Presidio County Courthouse. Originally brick, now stucco. The water tower. It seems to be famous, too. Sunset in Marfa. Some great thunderclouds while we we...

One may ask why we decided to spend a night in Silver City, NM. Besides the fact that it is a nice breaking point on the drive to Marfa from Sedona, and the fact that an old college buddy had retired to there, I was planning on moving to Silver City in 1980. I was a young Mining Engineer working for Exxon Minerals, and we were planning on developing a resource in Pinos Altos, just outside of Silver City. Here are some of the core samples from the deposit. It was going to be an underground mine, but then the commodities market fell apart, and the mine was cancelled. The deposit has not been mined to this day. But Silver City is a very attractive little town now. There are two active mines (Surface, big ones) that provide a solid economic base for the city, and there is also a lot of hiking, biking, and other outdoor activities in the nearby Gila National Forest. This is the view from our hotel room:   This is the hotel. It used to be a mansion from an old Silver baron, built in the ...

There is a trailhead about three blocks from the place we are staying in Sedona. So we had to do that at least one day. We picked the Teakettle and Soldier's Pass trails (they meet at the Severn Sacred Pools) and figured we would get in about 7 miles. It looked a lot like this the whole way:  It was a beautiful day The terrain here is great; This is a giant sinkhole, not far from the Seven Sacred Pools: This is one of the Seven Sacred Pools. I was trying to get people to drink out of them, to no avail. Our Alltrails route: For dinner, we went to a place at the airport (!) called The Mesa. We had to wait about a half hour, but the food was great! Then, we were just in time for the Sunset at the Vortex (The airport is one of the seven Vortex locations in Sedona) Lots of people. Very windy. Beautiful.