The Marfa Lights!

1 Mar 2013--The first time we ever heard of the town of Marfa, about 20 miles south of Ft Davis, and the whole reason we initially decided to come to this area was to see what are called the "Marfa Lights", a strange and unexplained phenomena of random lights that appear in the sky.  So last night after we ate supper we headed out there to see what we could see.

This is the County Courthouse, which seemed to scream "delusions of grandeur" for a town of 2100 people (haha).  But then I read that the county goes all the way down to the Rio Grande at the Mexican border, so I guess it serves many towns of 2000 people.



There wasn't a whole lot to see in the town, but this old hearse seemed to demand that I take some pics.  A bit over the top?



We didn't know it in advance, but this hotel served as production headquarters for the movie "Giant", and most of the stars of that film stayed here during the filming.  It was initially built in anticipation of a local oil boom that never materialized and is now a Texas Historic Landmark!  (Again, a bit of a stretch!)




We couldn't help but notice this couple in the window...the woman is literally sitting in the window...as we walked by.  When we looked into the restaurant it was completely empty except these 2...they looked really funny squeezed into this small space, but it appears that they chose those seats!!!



So we headed about 5 miles outside town where they have what they call a visitor center, but is really just a big building with a couple bathrooms.  The 2nd pic tells us that the 1st sighting of the lights was back in 1883, by a cowboy who thought maybe they were fires of Apache Indians.  There are several other theories mentioned, but no one seems to know.  There were probably about a dozen people besides me and Cathy that showed up, and I heard this woman in the chair tell the guy that they had come the previous night and seen nothing, so I wasn't very hopeful.



In the back of the visitor's center they had a small display showing a couple pics of previously seen lights...they were behind some faded plastic so not very good pics.



I really wasn't convinced we would see anything after sundown, but I took this video to show where we would be looking in case anything happened.  It didn't appear that anything is out there that could account for what they say happens.



As the sun goes down, the mountains turn red...and we wait in anticipation of the phenomena!



So I have already expressed how skeptical we were of seeing anything, but we totally lucked out...you are not gonna believe this, but it really happened.  I thought I missed these with the still photos, but if you blow them up you can see small white lights that are moving.  I didn't even know till I blew them up on the computer at home.



Better than anything else that happened, this is by far the best one.  We actually saw a handful of different things that I thought I kept missing, so I turned to the video setting on my camera and kept the camera up by my face so if we saw anything at all I could hit the button and quickly find it in the sky.  God only knows what this is!!!



I barely caught this one at all...like 4 seconds worth before it disappeared on me.



And this is the only other one we were able to get a bit of...they move pretty fast and erratically, and don't last long, so you have a hard time getting a bead on it.



What a trip!  We had a blast out there, but don't really know what the heck we were seeing.  It was freezing cold, so we only lasted about an hour and a half before we left, but it was fun.  Definitely worth the trip!!!  Anyone have any ideas of what these things might be???