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!

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I might be inclined to call it the trip from Hell, but others have had it much worse than this.  However, it wasn’t one fun moment after another, that’s for sure.

Let’s talk first about the trip to Midland Odessa RV Park.   While in route to our first fuel stop in Ranger Texas, we got an alert of a tire leak.  Our TPMS TireMinder said the tire was down to ten pounds.  This required that I pull over in a very precarious spot on a merging ramp to highway 20.  I hopped out with my tire gauge, and the tire was at 80 PSI.  Once I put the sensor back on it read correctly inside the truck.  No idea why this happened but I do plan on having a conversation with the TireMinder folks about their sensors.  This isn’t the first time we have had a faulty reading.  Maybe, just maybe this was the red flag that the trip wasn’t going to be perfect.

Our first stop was the Midland Odessa RV Park.  It was once a KOA.  Here’s my advice – don’t go.  It really is, as tammy put it, “A community of full timer’s” with some available sites for travelers.  You may ask, how do you know that?  Walk around the campground for ten minutes and you will see some of the strangest things.  Abandoned RV refrigerators outside RVs, one with a broken table on top of it.  Dog fences around many, many trailers.  Garbage laying around trailers along with lots of extraneous stuff that could be picked up.  Lots of junk, real junk, laying up against trailers.

I could give you more examples, but I don’t think it necessary.  About the only good thing you could say about this campground is that maybe (given what we saw along the highway on the way there) it’s better than the other alternatives.  My opinion is to find a different route to Marfa.  The pictures below don’t reflect the overall state of the campground, but you can see a glimpse of what is acceptable.

What else can I say about that area?  Horrible confusing construction, with poor signage.  Long traffic backups, poor access to the highway from the frontage roads.  Then the worst part is the abundance of dust blowing in the air.  The air is thick with it.  If you have respiratory issues, this would be another reason to find a different route to Marfa.

Anyway, on to Marfa the next day.  It was a short ride compared to the previous day.  Less than 3 hours, stopping in Stockton, Texas for fuel. Then it was a short 95 miles to our campground, the Tumble In RV Park.

Just as a heads up, you will never be greeted or meet the owner.  Reservations are made on-line only.  You register yourself when you arrive.  Even if you have a spot reserved (marked with a traffic cone) which will be listed on a white board; you will still need to fill out a paper listing who you are, which spot you are in etc.  This is all done in a tiny orange and white 1960’s travel trailer, which sits about 100 yards inside the entrance.  Be careful, the entrance is hard to find with all the high weeds growing along the front of the campground.

The Tumble In has 22 sites of which 5 or 6 are full hook up.

The pads are gravel and are actually quite level.  Unfortunately, desert grasses with burrs outside your trailer and throughout the campground is what you and your dog will encounter.  Because of the burrs I’d say it is not particularly dog friendly but that might be the case anywhere down here. 

There’s no getting away from the burrs and if you have a dog somehow many of them will make their way into your trailer.  Even though I kicked my shoes off at the door and it didn’t help at all. I still was able to get stuck about 30 times walking in my socks inside the trailer. I probably pulled 20 or more out of Eva’s feet. She was really good about it. PLEASE, I can’t stress enough, this is a rough terrain for dogs. I also noticed a lot of tiny broken glass particles in the gravel areas around the campground.

The campground was largely unoccupied with the exception of 6 or 7 full timers.  The week we were there, we only had neighbors for two days, then we were alone again. The Tumble In is really close to town. Within walking distance is a dollar general, a hardware store, and much more. You could walk there if you want to via a trail at the rear of the campground.

The campground also has clean bathrooms, showers, and a small room for gatherings. It has a wood burning furnace, a refrigerator, a sink, utensils, a stove. This was a really nice touch and was always clean.

Here’s the part that will turn a lot of folks off. It is quiet most of the time, but trains come by somewhat regularly; usually about 5:05 am and 6:15 am and a few other times throughout the day. I heard a couple in the middle of the night also.  It will rattle your glassware since the tracks are quite close to the campground.  I grew up with trains in my backyard so it’s not an issue for me, and Tammy doesn’t get bothered by it at all.

Angels’ Mexican Restaurant is just down the street. The food is really good, but we waited 45 minutes after our order was placed. So, call ahead and order, just tell them you will eat in. It’s a small operation.

If you’re camping in a non-full hook up site, the dump station has no black tank flush water supply. In addition, a note in registration trailer requests that you don’t flush out your tank after dumping at your full hook-up site.  I’m guessing water is very expensive in this desert area.

There is very little to absolutely no shade in this campground. We found a tree in the site next to us that was unoccupied.  We put our chairs there and followed the shade as it moved around the tree.

The weather was always pleasant, perhaps mid-80’s. Don’t be fooled by that though, the sun beats down like a furnace on the trailer.

The sun is absolutely brutal there and it’s on an angle that makes your awnings useless.  By 4:00 PM the Air Conditioning would struggle to maintain a decent inside temp.  I used my heat gun in the trailer to see what the temp was on the inside of the windows. They showed 105 degrees.  I actually switched out my thermostat while we were there because it wasn’t acting correctly.  It was fine after that. It did require a quick trip to the local hardware store to buy some tiny screwdrivers. They came in handy a couple days later when the battery in the LevelMate Pro began beeping.

So, if you want to cut down on the heat inside, get some reflective insulation. Then put that on the sun facing side of your trailer windows. You will be glad you did.

I would be lying if I told you I didn’t like the Tumble In, I would go back. It’s hard not to like a place when you are one of the only campers there!  Next time I think I’d bring booties for Eva.  I would also put insulation on the windows

If you are an early riser you might see something very strange outside the campground facing south at 4:00 in the morning. I did two mornings in a row,  It was something I could not explain.  I did take a video of it, and will have it on my YouTube channel.  Tammy put it best when she said, “there’s a lot of weird stuff going on here”.

Alright, I think I’ve given you the low down on the trip to Marfa and the Tumble In RV Park.

The next post will be The Marfa Lights. Click here to see that post!

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