Marfa sucks and blows

We left our cheap motel in El Paso and headed down the highway to Marfa. We had to use the Interstate highway, so the ride was fast and furious, with lots of fast moving cars and trucks. The highway speed limit actually hit 80 MPH — that’s nearly 130 km/hr, which really meant everyone was driving closer to 90 or 100 mph. And that included the transport trucks! Add to this a pretty high wind, and long stretches of scraped pavement, and it was a ride not to be repeated.

Luckily we arrived to our destination of Marfa without any problems. We found our way to El Cosmico, which is a campground just outside of town. It’s a rather pretentious, completely artificial, too-cool-to-be-real, kinda place. It offers a “roughing it” experience, seemingly aimed at 20-something “hipsters.” You can stay in old parked RVs, canvas army-style tents, teepees, or yurts. They’re all decked out with comfy beds, electricity and the RVs have water and showers. They also offer basic camping (for $15/person), which is why we’re here.

Actually, it’s wasn’t all that bad. Just felt rather fake. But the main building had coffee in the morning, and sold beer for the evening. It even had free wifi, which turned out to be a blessing on our third day when a windstorm blew in and left us unable to ride our bikes. They also had outdoor communal kitchen and showers, which was wonderful to use after dark. The water was hot, and you could stare up into the stars while scrubbing the grime off. Cool, eh 😉

The town of Marfa is kinda interesting. There are a number of art galleries and interesting shops and restaurants. Unfortunately not very much was open when we were there, even though this is apparently the busy season. The town itself has the feel of decline, with a lot of businesses bordered up and vacant. Walk a bit off the main drag and you encountered gutted and dilapidated houses. All in all it had a pretty rough and declining feeling.

Despite this, it was still an interesting place to stay. And stay we did… We originally booked in for two nights, but the morning we planned to leave had a forecast of winds over 30 knots, with gusts going much higher. There were RED wind warnings all over, so we decided to stay another night.

It’s a good thing we did. The wind kept increasing to the point where we feared for our tent. It wasn’t just blowing hard, it was picking up all the dust and grit from the desert. It was an honest-to-goodness dust storm! The dirt was everywhere; in your hair and eyes, in your clothes, and even inside our closed tent!

We’re hoping the wind will let up tomorrow so we can drive the couple 100 km down to Big Bend National Park. We’re trying to meet up with Linda and Roger and Rascal again. Tonight will be another cold, and blustery one. But at least there’s beer!

ADDENDUM: The wind continued to build to a howlin’ gale. Our tent was doing OK until branches from a nearby tree cracked off, hitting our tent and tearing a hole in the fly. It’s not too bad, and at least it’s over the vestibule area. We have some patching material, so we’re in search of a nylon adhesive.

We awoke today with plans to get going to Big Bend. Overnight was another cold one, and it wasn’t much warmer by later morning. Still, we packed up and tried to beat the building wind, but it was all for naught. The wind once again was blowin’ a gale by 10 am, so we’ve opted to stay here one more night. This time we’re treating ourselves to a “safari tent”, which is really just a square canvas tent. But it comes with a bed, lighting, and an electric mattress heater. Nice, since the forecast calls for -6ºC tonight.

We used the communal cookhouse again today to cook up a batch of Ann’s World Famous Beans. They had a sign board there, so while Ann cooked I left a message: