One afternoon, I took the kids to SXSW Create, a free exhibit about all kinds of kid-friendly technology. The boys loved it as there were things to see that made us laugh, oohh and ahh and see the world differently. The highlights included a musical forest where leaves were conductors that generated music when touched, boxes that made you look like living bobble heads (my personal favorite), a 3D flight simulator, making airplanes, a robot that could solve rubick's cubes, R2D2, controlling robots with marker designs, and creating paper flowers in the greenhouse.
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| making art on spinning plates |
That Tuesday, we hit the road, driving 6 hours west to stay the night in Marathon, outside Big Bend National Park. We explored the town and had dinner before hitting the hay in the Texas-style Gage Hotel.
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| my little tree-huggers! |
The next morning after breakfast, we headed out to Big Bend National Park which should be called "Holy Cow this is Ginormous!!! Bend National Park". It took hours to get from one end of the park to the other, but the scenic drive was well worth it. I only wish we had started out earlier, as we were only able to fit in one of the two planned hikes. The first at Balanced Rock, was a nice mile hike up among canyons, culminating at the mysterious, (you guessed it), balancing rock. By the time we did that, had lunch and drove to the other side of the park to Santa Elena Canyon on the Mexican border, it was 96 degrees and sweltering. It was also much later than we were expecting and we still had a 3 hour drive to Marfa. So, we briefly took in the view at the overlook, which was to me, the most stunning view of the entire park. Really wish we had been able to do the hike along the Rio Grande. Guess we'll know for next time if there's ever a next time!
View from lunch in Chisos Canyon:
Then it was a ride on the Ross Maxwell Scenic drive. It's really hard to get perspective from these photos. Look for the tiny roads in comparison to the canyons.
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| That gorge in the distance on the right is Santa Elena where we were headed |
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| Santa Elena Canyon. The Rio Grande runs right through it, separating U.S. and Mexico. You can barely see the water here. No need for Trump to build a wall here, this thing is massive. |
After the long day, we made the long drive to Marfa, passing through a couple of towns with not much of anything in between. We were surprised to find Marfa to be smaller than we thought, and more run down although the place we rented was nice enough. The next morning, we hit a bakery for breakfast and then the boys and I toured the notable Chinati Foundation where we saw famous art installations from Donald Judd (100 varying mill aluminum structures), Dan Flavin (florescent lights that tricked your eyes with light frequencies), Robert Irwin (building that took you from light to dark), and John Chamberlain (giant balls of crushed up car pieces). The boys were well behaved and liked the modern art. They did not allow photos, but I got these off their website:
Later that day, we visited Morgan's classmates Pierce & Bentsen at their vacation home in Fort Davis for dinner. It was great to see them and nice for the boys to play with some familiar faces. The views from the wrap around porch were just ridiculous. I kept taking photos because the sky was changing so often as the sun set. I wish I could've taken photos of the night sky - I've never seen so many stars.
