the day after "the hike that never ended" and "attack of the wild javelinas" was a lovely one. it was another cool and crisp start to a lovely day, and since we had showered the night before, we were in fairly good moods. all i can say is that dr. bonner's magic soap is one of the things for which i am most grateful in my life. it makes you feel minty fresh for hours. that and johnson's baby powder. sorry, i got sidetracked.
derkirita made breakfast couscous, which was brown-sugary good with cranberries. yum. during breakfast (we got the coffee pot fixed before we actually made the coffee, this time, so no burns this morning) dungeon master came over to chat with us about the previous night's excitement. it was then that he got his name, because up until then, he'd just been "nice stepdad with cute wife and stepkid". this guy was so full of crap, i'm surprised a little didn't drip out of the corner of his mouth everytime he spoke. seriously. here's how the story went down:
kk: so, how much stuff did you guys loose last night? was everyone ok?
dungeon master: oh, we lost some lunch meat, and the little bastards ate our ham. (i'm thinking this is highly ironic until later in the day when i find out that javelina aren't even related to pigs...) ***This is the good part** i hit the big one on the head with my mag light. (oh right, like he would still have a freaking arm...), and i was going to pick up one of the little ones and throw it in the creek, but i was trying to pick the cooler up at the same time. (uh huh, i bet...). blah blah blah...i've been around wild animals my whole life. i used to run a rescue farm for stuff. we've raised xyz such animals...
r: oh wow, that's cool.
dungeon master: more bullsh*t for about 5 more minutes, after which he gave us his left over firewood. yay.
then he left. kk gave me crap for encouraging the dungeon master. and when he said that he and the fam were going to be on vacation for two more weeks, i politely said " hey, take us with you" and we all laughed. kk was not amused by the idea of being with dungeon master for any more than the 15 minutes it took us to pack our stuff to go to balmoreah. kk decided to call him the dungeon master after the extensive lecture he gave us on wild animal husbandry. the name really stuck when he started an impromptu digeree (sp?) dou jam session with his kid, who looked like dewey from "malcolm in the middle". kk said he looked like the kind of guy who would have his dungeons and dragons set with him on vacation, and would insist on being the dungeon master anytime he played. derkirita and i concurred.
we got packed up for our outing that day, and headed to balmoreah state park, site of the world's largest outdoor spring-fed swimming pool. it was beautiful, cold, and full of fish. it was amazing to be in the middle of the desert and just have this actual oasis open right up in the middle of it all. derkirita said being there made her feel like she was in some foreign country. we ate trail mix, people watched, swam and sunbathed. we saw a cute little family playing in the pool. little did we know, that cute fam would stalk us for the rest of the trip. or if they weren't stalking us, they sure showed up every where else we went for the entire week. i don't think they are actually in my apartment at the moment, but i haven't put all my laundry away, yet...
the clouds started moving in from the west at a pretty fast clip, and it started to thunder and lightening, so we got out of the pool like the smart kids we are. we had lunch under a little pavilion and watched it rain. and then we watched it hail. and hail. and rain. and hail a little more. we packed up, bought our park patches, and drove back to the fort with the slightly sulfur smell of san Solomon springs in our hair. it was lovely and we made a plan to come back there on our way back to austin.
at the fort, we changed clothes (we felt clean enough, since we swam) and set our plans for the evening activities--dinner at the historic el paisano hotel and viewing of the marfa mystery lights.
as an aside, i should tell you that derkirita planned this whole trip into the west. and i should also tell you that she was partly inspired by an episode of "king of the hill", where in bobby gets to see the marfa lights. this is partially what caused kk's inner monologue voice to be bobby hill for the duration of the trip, that and the fact that i can apparently do a wicked bobby impression and kept talking in that voice for large periods of time.
the hotel paisano (which you can read about here:http://www.hotelpaisano.com/ ) was where elizabeth taylor and rock hudson, et. al. stayed during the filming of the epic "Giant". the movie itself was filmed outside of marfa, on the mitchell plateau. they have a lot of memorabilia from the movie in the hotel, and a cute little restaurant. dinner was good, and many thanks go to kk for footing the bill. our waiter was this little nervous guy named "shin-knee" at least, that's how he pronounced it, and pointed to the corresponding body parts to reinforce said pronunciation. he also had on a lot of cologne. but he was mostly cute and did a pretty good job waiting on the three of us. should you visit jett's grill at the hotel, i can recommend one or two items. the crusted steak was excellent, the garlic potatoes were nice, if a little on the cold side, and the chocolate creme brulee was superlative. seriously. it was better than a big wet smooch.
ok, it was a close second.
and then, we went to see the eeriest thing i have ever personally witnessed in all my 26 years of life. we got to the marfa mystery lights viewing area about an hour before dusk, since dusk is supposed to be the prime viewing time for the lights. we were accosted (ok, just sort of talked to) by a bizarre lady in a blue miata, who kept looking into the south, and telling us to "look beyond and then look beyond the beyond..." in some kind of weird shamanic voice that evoked thoughts of unfiltered cigarettes and jars of homebrew. it was sort of neat, i think. she said that she came to texas because she hated tennesee. she said that when she died, she didn't want to go to heaven, she wanted to go to texas. and that marfa seemed like as good a place to die as anywhere else. like i said, it was a weird experience the whole way around. but the blue miata lady was a good set up for what i found (or rather didn't find) in the bathroom.
now, people who know me know how much i love bathrooms, and it's not because i particularly like them just because. no, i love them because i'm in them all the time. while i usually prefer function over form, i must say that the marfa mystery lights view area bathroom was a pleasure to experience from all facets. it was a recycling toilet. i don't want to know into what my or your or anyone else's waste was being recycled, but it was amazing. not only was there no water (which freaked me out at first), there was NO SMELL. it was incredible. and there was a nice, slightly disconcerting breeze coming from under the seat. i liked it so much, i took pictures of the bathroom. i'll post them with the others...but that's another bunny trail...
the marfa mystery lights were first seen and reported by anglos in the late 1800's. but the native americans who lived in that part of texas had stories about them going back for hundreds of years. no one has figured out what causes them, but theories abound. you can google "marfa mystery lights" and see some of the theories for yourself, if you'd like.
all i can tell you is that there is something out there, and i've never seen anything quite like what i saw that night, and while i wasn't afraid of what i saw, it certainly left me feeling a little uneasy, but glad, too, because it's nice to sometimes be reminded that some things in this life just defy explanation. it was beautiful and bizarre.
on the way back to the fort, we discovered that there are no working atm's in the tri-county area. we also discovered that we could pick up radio stations in los angeles, shreveport, dallas, san antonio, and other places that didn't speak english. it was very exciting. i kind of wanted to listen to creepy radio shows about aliens, but was still a little freaked out.
we made it home in one piece and slept a good long sleep, except that the javelinas made a return trip to eat our toothpaste spit. sick out.
i'll finish up our adventures and tell you about the family reunion tomorrow.
mil besos--r
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