Day 22 - Boquillas de Carmen and hot springs

When we travel we should expect the unexpected... it may turn out to be a good thing.
The plan was to go soaking in a hot-spring, south west of the park. We were ready to pay for the entrance since the government shutdown has 'temporarily' ended yesterday.
We get to the gate and the closure sign is still up so the park is again free today. Driving in front of us is a ranger service car. Maybe they are still calling back the troops. Maybe they need a couple of days to access the damage inflicted by the notorious tourists. Maybe they need a day to clean up all the toilet paper left around sites...
We travel miles through the green chihuahua desert passing prickly pear forests, ocotillos and creosote.
We end up at the sign to Boquillas de Carmen. Such a cute name! We go to the Boquillas Crossing to Mexico but it is still closed, because of the  shutdown since it was deemed to be a non-essential border.

So we proceed to check out the town of Boquillas de Carmen from a view point. We see the colorful rooftops. There is Mexico!

We parked the car and there is the Rio Grande in all its glory. The border of Mexico runs along the middle of the river, no walls or obstructions of any sort. On a rock there were some knickknacks made by the locals from the other side. I really like the roadrunners.

Then we hear some people calling us to come down. There was a table in the middle of the river with people drinking beer and a guitar player singing, US on one side, Mexico on the other. It was the 'Sand Bar'...get it? 😂

They were serving Tecate beer, margaritas and tacos. A lady was cooking on a table on the other shore. There was a boat that for a fee would take you to the other side.

I talked to the guitar player for a while. They said that the government shutdown border closure had impaired  tourism for this small town and also their only source of gas and groceries. The closest town for them in Mexico was 160 miles away. This was more convenient. There were trying to help them out.

It was a party! We stayed for the beer and for the tacos. I went to the shore. They told me I was ok with the law as long as I had my feet stayed in the water. I followed the rules. I don't think there was anybody there who cared to stop them.

We left to reach our real destination: the hot springs.

There was a small trail along the river that ended up in remnant of what it must have been thermal bath. The water was Jacuzzi warm. The river was flowing by. 

pintoglyphs

petroglyphs

birds nests

hot springs by the Rio Grande

I got so warm, I had to go on the river to cool off. The water was cold but not like the ocean. I floated down on the rapids and stopped at a landing that had a trail leading back to the springs. I did it several times. I kept thinking 'I am swimming in the Rio Grande!'

We stayed until the stars came out. We kept talking to the same people we had met at the Sand Bar. I love Texas and the Texans, and I haven't seen half of it.

We ended up having dinner at Terlingua, a ghost town with two of our new friends. We closed down the restaurant. We promised to meet again in Austin.

Day 21 - Santa Elena Canyon

Tuff Canyon Trail

Mule Ears Peaks

Our latest real estate investment...

Homer Wilson Ranch

Dikes formation

Day 21 - Marfa to Big Bend

Art installation 6 miles from Marfa from 2018, 'Giant Marfa' by John Cerney. There are even speakers that blare music.

Javelinas

Before leaving we went to visit the Judd Foundation in town. It was about Judd home, his furniture, his early sculptures, his library, his courtyard. I got a million of ideas for our future abode.

Day 20 - the Chinati Foundation

I have to confess I didn't know anything about Donald Judd. I had promised myself to read at least his wiki, but there was never enough time. So when we entered the first building and I saw a bunch of cubes, I was resigned to the fact that I know nothing about modern art and that the whole visit was going to be a waste of time. Our guide gave us minimal information and this made me even more frustrated.
There were 100 aluminum cubes, 52 in the first building and 48 in a second. They were made of the same size, were perfectly aligned and evenly spaced in three rows. Each one was unique. Some had a panel missing or only half of it, some had panels set at different levels or at different angles. The warehouse had large windows on both sides casting shadows from the cubes and their own frames on the cement floor at regular intervals.  The light was shining on the cubes, giving various shades of grey to the partitions in the cubes. If a section was closed, the front area was dark grey, and if it was open was light grey.
Looking at a cube was like seeing a two dimensional geometrical design with geometrical parts of different shades. But as you walk around it, the design changes at every step. The panel position was playing with my sight. Some looked so shiny and light that they seemed to be made of glass. Each panel reflected lines and shades from another panel creating more geometrical forms. It was genius! The stillness of the metal cubes was in contrast with the environment surrounding them which was changing. The cubes were going to look differently in shapes and colors depending on whether it was dawn or dusk, day or night, with a full moon or in lightning storm. Can you imagine?
I could have walked around those cubes forever. It was mesmerizing, it was beautiful!
We weren't allowed to take pictures.
Outside there was west Texas, the chihuahua desert, flat, dry, with cotton trees. There were more bigger cubes made in cement laying out there. More symmetry, more beauty.

We took the 4 hour tour with a two hour interval to check out the cubes in cement out there.
The Chinati foundation (named after the local mountains) was Donald Judd's vision, the first large scale permanent art museum. He had seen this area in his youth and when it was time to escape the claustrophobia of New York City, he remembered it and came back to set roots. He bought the abandoned cavalry post of Fort D.A. Russell which sits in 340 acres and includes eighteen buildings, that once served as army barracks, mess halls, artillery sheds.
These buildings host more artists which we got to visit and get to know. We saw one installation that occupied six buildings by Dan Flavin with florescent tubes. We found out that light mixes color differently than paint. It was engaging and beautiful.
We saw a temporary exhibition of wall paintings by Bridget Riley.
There were other permanent exhibitions, each in its own dedicated building.
The Carl Andre zen garden with rows of copper plates was enclosed in a horse shape building courtyard. Ingólfur Arnarsson had a series of  36 small graphite drawings. They looked like they were made of one grey tone, but in fact the artist had drawn so many cross-hatched lines that they appear to be of one color. I see why Judd liked him so much. They did not like to be classified as minimalists. Minimalism can be complex, but not complicated.
Roni Horn had two solid copper truncated cones, bigger side facing the entrance. 
I really liked the work of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov of schoolhouse number 6, the replica of an abandoned Russian school. There was so much: the daily life, the treasuring of small things, the bickering, the broken promises, the past, the effort to accomplish the tasks. Loved it!
Other artists were John Wesley, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, and David Rabinowitch (https://chinati.org/collection/).

 

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in memory of old Louie

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov School n.6

Richard Long sea lava circled. It was supposed to be from tallest rock to smallest as a drop, but not according to Judd

Furniture by Judd

David Rabinowitch

Judd solarium

Judd Jacuzzi

remnants from the fort times

After lunch we went to visit John Chamberlain's and Robert Irwin's buildings.

John Chamberlain's was in town in a former wool building and had 23 of his pieces made of car metal parts.

One was a giant bed covered in parachute material. There were two old TVs on each side showing a porno movie with Ultraviolet (Andy Warhol's collaborator) impersonating Monte Zuma, having a good time with another artist impersonating Hernán Cortés the conquistador. Funny that the conquistador is not naked. Aaaah the seventies and women's lib!? 

We had to drive to see the Robert Irwin's 'Dawn to Dusk' largest work. It was in the old hospital of the fort, a U-shaped building with a sculpture as a tableau of large basalt columns in the middle of the courtyard. The left side is dedicated to Dawn and the right to Dusk. It is divided by wall of scrim that filter light from the rows of windows on each side. There is so much to it, it has to be experienced. You can walk it from one side to the other, but you can start from the middle for both sides (personal choice).

At night we needed a good drink to ponder over all we saw. So we went to the Paisano Restaurant. With a name like this, usually I steer clear in disdain. But you cannot go by your guts all the time.

It was the best dinner and best cocktail in a long time, with the bonus of the cool ambiance with large black and white pictures from the movie Giant hanging on the walls.