I’m not sure how I overlooked posting this part of our trip. I do have it on our YouTube channel as a video as well. So, my apologies, lets talk Marfa Lights:

The Marfa Lights

Rumor has it that you can only see the Marfa lights about 30 times during the year.  The best chances they say are in September and March.  The most likely time to see them is just after sunset and just before sunrise. That certainly wasn’t our experience as we were there in October and there was plenty of activity going on (both at the overlook and just outside the campground).

Let me start by talking about the strange stuff outside the campground in the sky towards the Chinati Mountain Range. Eva and I get up really early in the morning, which can be anywhere from 2:00 to 4:00 AM. This is just the way I have been all my life. My Mom used to say if they heard something strange downstairs in the morning, they knew it wasn’t a burglar, it was John.

Eva and I were easily out the trailer door by 4:00 AM each day in Marfa. What I didn’t expect was to see anything strange in the sky at 4:00 AM, two days in a row.  I thought, at first, perhaps it was the Marfa lights. However, this was just too high in the sky for that.  This thing moved rapidly from side to side, darted around and even changed colors.  I do have a video of it on our YouTube channel, click here to see it. You will need to expand the screen and look closely but you will see it. Perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for what I saw, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Now let’s forward to our first visit to the actual Marfa lights Experience. 

The Marfa outlook is just 9 miles down the road from the campground.   The parking is weird.  You need to park alongside the driveway as opposed to pulling into stalls.  This doesn’t leave a lot of room if a lot of people decide to come.

The Marfa Lights Overlook

It’s an adobe looking structure and has a pretty large viewing area as well as some binocular type viewers mounted on stands.  From what I could tell the lens were so dirty on the inside of the units, that they were pretty much inoperable.

Bring some chairs with you because there are only benches along the back wall.  I was a little worried that it would be buggy but it wasn’t.  ALSO, bring a flashlight because it will be pitch black when you leave, and that will make it difficult to navigate back to your vehicle.

There are some benches on the land beyond the viewing station if you want to go down to ground level.  Keep in mind, that area does not appear to be maintained; so, you will probably need to step over brush, and you may get stuck with burrs…ask me how I know – this is a desert environment.

We arrived there as the sun was setting.  There were perhaps 20 people in total at the overlook.  About 10 minutes after arriving we started seeing lights towards the Chinati mountain range.  First there was one, then two, then a couple more.  Then one on top of another.  It was interesting for sure.  I took quite a few videos that we can take a look at now.  My camera was in a tripod.  I think Tammy and I stayed until about 9 PM and then headed back to the campground.

On our second visit, three nights later, there was much more activity.  There were a lot of lights moving about on the horizon.  Interestingly enough something else was up in the sky about a quarter mile out from us.  No one else seemed to notice it, but it moved very strange and then quickly moved from right to left and disappeared.  Again, no idea what that was, but it was very similar to what I experienced outside the campground.

Once we felt things were tapering off, we decided to head back to camp.

I would highly recommend going to Marfa to see the lights.  It’s interesting to see something that no one has been able to explain.

For more information including videos from the overlook, click here to see those videos plus a recap of the Marfa trip including the lights on YouTube. There was a lot to pack into the videos, so they are pretty long – grab some popcorn!