The Chinati Foundation is a contemporary art museum. Its houses a collection of permanent installations across the rambling campus of a decommissioned air base. But it isn't a spot you just wander in to. No, It takes an appointment, a guide, and a lot of time.
We had a few hours to kill before our tour at the Chinati Foundation so we hit another notable art spot in town. Ballroom Marfa is a contemporary art space in the heart of town. Like all good things Marfa, it is a converted building. Before hosting films, music, and performing arts events and a gallery, the structure was a dance hall dating back to 1927.
Seven miles east of Marfa, surreal lights attributed to UFOs, will-o-the-wisps, or the reflections of car lights and camp fires have been sited along a portion of the desert often between 2 and 3 AM. So, people camp out at a conveniently located rest stop, hoping to have their own illuminating experience.
We have zig zagged across the country enough now to see familiar places. There goes the gas station with prices so inflated that we risked running out of gas rather than indulge the gouging owners. There is the parking lot where I taped up Dodgy I's window when it rolled down for the last time and never quite rolled back up. And up ahead is Prada Marfa. This stop is intentional because what we didn't know at the time we passed Prada Marfa the fist time is that it is only the tip of the minimalist artistic iceberg floating alone in the East Texas desert known as Marfa.
We arrived in El Paso a little after rush hour. The freeway congestion has not yet fully cleared. I watch a truck, then a van, then a compact car drive off the free way, down a gravel embankment, and onto a service road paralleling the freeway. A car already on the road honks as one of the traffic defectors cuts him off. This is what we've been trying to avoid.
My driver was resolute, we would not take the 10. At least, we would not take the 10 until we reached El Paso. It's pretty unavoidable at that point. But, until El Paso, we would stay on small isolated roads where our view would be of mountains and grasslands, rather than the next car's bumper. So I plotted a course hugging the Mexico border.
There is something about old ghost towns that attracts oddities. Last year, we stayed overnight in Bisbee, Arizona—an old mining town that was resurrected by a group of artists. Today, we took a pit stop at a neighboring town where all that is left is one street, Erie Street.
All we wanted was a view. And a place to cook. We had intended to make it out to some hot springs in Truth or Consequences, but after wandering through the Biosphere 2 and shopping for supplies for the night, we looked at the sun and were determined not to have another night like the Great Kofa Compromise.
Cults, pseudoscience, and an oil fortune meet in the Arizona desert of Oracle, outside Tucson, with Biosphere 2—a money pit turned research facility.
Leaving the Superstition Mountains, we made a not-so-bee-line for Tucson, Arizona. In an effort to avoid tiresome highways, we happened across Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. This collection of ancient structures is remarkable for the size of the titular, free standing "Great House."