Page 5 - Marfa Road Trip_ Thelma and Louise, With a Happier Ending - The New York Times

1/26/2018 Marfa Road Trip: Thelma and Louise, With a Happier Ending - The New York Times

El Cosmico is a trailer hotel and campground on 21 acres, filled with vintage trailers and teepees.
Stacy Sodolak for The New York Times

That’s when I saw it. A beam of light in the shape of an orb hopped across the
road and just as quickly disappeared.

I grabbed onto the wheel and screamed and then Sara screamed, “What is it?

What! What?”

“I think we’re seeing our first U.F.O.”

I was half-kidding, half-serious. We were in West Texas. Roswell, N. M., where

ominous U.F.O. stories have been churned out for decades, was only four hours
from here. Plus Marfa had its own weird phenomenon called the Marfa Lights.
Yellowish orbs had been spotted flashing through this desert since the late 1800s.

(There’s even a Mystery Lights Viewing Area
(http://www.visitmarfa.com/lights.php#.Wc0ACdOGMyk), a truly unusual
roadside center where people gather nightly.)

I didn’t pull over because when you think you see a U.F.O. in the desert and

there’s no one around, you don’t pull over. I have enough nostalgic alien movies
under my belt to know this. However, I slowed down the car and there they were
again — orbs the size of grapefruits, miles away. My heart pounded because it
was only the beginning of our journey and we had already descended into a

Steven Spielberg extraterrestrial movie. But as we drove closer, we realized they
weren’t free-floating orbs at all. They were just truck lights dipping in and out of

the sightline. And there you have it: My first desert mirage.

During our four-day road trip, our home base was El Cosmico

(http://elcosmico.com/), a quirky hotel and campground on 21 acres, filled with
vintage trailers (Beth and I stayed in a 24-foot, 1950s Branstrator with a
turquoise-painted top), Sioux-style teepees and yurts. Sara and Miriam holed up

in a bright pink 1953 Vagabond trailer.

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