It’s the shortest days that can feel the longest. I bet there’s a scientific reason for that. Like how during COVID every day has felt like a Tuesday. Science should be able to explain that too.
We left Big Bend on a Sunday. Tucked away loose objects in Phoebe the Trailer and said goodbye to the friendly retiree neighbors – who, just as we were leaving, gave the girls an animal skull they found while e-biking through the ghost town that morning. I don’t know what kind of skull it is but several months later we’re still carting the horned creature around.
Two hours later, we slowly pulled into Marfa where I immediately clogged the trailer toilet (TMI? Maybe. Yes. Bound to happen at some point? Definitely). Boy, that took a minute to figure out. Since then, we’ve learned something is always going to happen. Like when we left St George UT months later and I accidentally triggered the emergency brake on the trailer, drove two miles, and caused the whole thing to smoke and stink like a tire fire.
Life. What a game of whack-a-mole.
Anyway, Marfa. Lovely town. Truly. We ate lunch, wandered through shops, and I almost bought a cowboy hat. Close call, folks. We picked up coffee at a coffee shop / boutique / newspaper printer and watched Ford make an ad for their new electric Mustang (I think, I ain’t no car guy). I started saying “howdy” to people, driving Eleanor and Lucy crazy -“DAAAAD, you’re not from Texas?”
The highway was flat and the highway was windy. Dust piled up in the distance and trailers wobbled. I drove slow and and semis flew by, pulling us close with some kind of scientific force (the same one that distorts time I’m sure). We stopped by this thing in the middle of the desert and now we are #influencers.
It was getting late and we needed food and gas. My knuckles needed to stretch and crack. We had recently watched Padma Lakshmi’s Hulu show Taste the Nation so we picked up curbside at Elemi in El Paso. The tacos were good but with my brain full on fuzz by this point I can’t remember details. We ate as we drove the last leg to Las Cruces, NM.
Our initial plan was to stay in Tucson AZ but with COVID spiking in December we changed to NM. We exited the highway and found ourselves in big box land, like a desert version of Grandville, MI. By now I was used to the unsettled feeling I felt as we pulled into the new Airbnb and silently hoped it would pass just as quickly as other spots.
The Bass Note Journey 