Digital memories...from Earth's camera

How it all started...

Melany got a tidbit from the website "Austin Tidbits" that featured Marfa as the ultimate girl road trip destination, a getaway weekend was just what the doctor ordered. After reading the first paragraph of the article (below)...who wouldn't want to head west?!

"Itchin' for a road trip? The world has caught on to the historical and cultural "little town that could" nestled in the Chihuahuan Desert. The seven-hour trek is worth it to experience the beautiful West Texas mecca that is Marfa." - Austin Tidbits

Pre arrangements....

Melany is the Lodging Coordinator
Barbara is the Itinerary coordinator
Angela is the Food Coordinator
Cynthia is the Transportation & Music Provider

Outcome....
Casa Mirasol was chosen
Mel and Ange got yummy munchies
Cynthia is still the car/music provider
Barbara has info. on several places

hours away now...just hours away.

Day 1: September 7: Pre-Trip

September 7th has arrived, we are very excited...looking forward to 6+ hours of fun fun driving time.

Babs will get Angela from work at 1:15 pm then will head over to Angela's house where Melany will meet us, to drive together to Cynthia's house.
(B & A are sure Mel will arrive right at 2pm like she said).

2:15 pm! Melany has arrived! we head over to Cynthia's house to commence the greatest trip of September 2007!!


Update: Ok, so some of us were having doubts about 4 girls cooped up in a car for six hours +, very different personalities... = fun???

Day 1: "X marks the spot"

7th of September 2007

3:05 pm

Mel, Babs, Cyn and Ange

song
"Don't Stop Believing"- Journey



After a long departure, the four of us started our long journey to Marfa, TX. We began with a Shakira Marathon to get the "party bumpin'" (Babs, like a true champ held her own during the makeshift karaoke, "you go girl!")

Note: for next trip, must print out spanish lyrics for Barbara to follow along

After the marathon/karaoke we began the first of many rounds of car trip games.
First one up, "TV Trivia"...rules: can't remember, winner: undeclared
afterwards we moved on to an exciting game of "20 questions"... it went as follows:

Babs chose the object "wheel"- sadly no one could figure it out...(bad questions? or bad object? you decide...)

Melany chose the well known character from the Popeye cartoons, yes..his one true love: Olive Oil (Angela, it's spelled with an "i" not a "y") - Babs was the champ for this round

Angela chose the "Hulk"- secret reason: Angela had the hots for the Hulk...true confession.
again...sadly no one could figure it out... beginning to think that we don't ask good questions.

Cynthia chose the place, Vatican City, after much questioning no one could guess it either.

After a couple of hours (sorry there is no exact time, our recorder failed us) we were famished. We found a quaint little restaurant in some podunk town before Sonora named Sonic, where we were attacked by bees.

The next "big town" on our drive was Sonora, where we decided to pick up our booze seeing as how most of the pueblos we were passing were dry. We found a drive in liquor store (only in Texas) where we proceeded to scan the aisles for the perfect bottle of rum, our conclusion: the good old captain came to the rescue (Captain Morgan, Coconut rum). At the checkout counter a mean and blind woman carded all of us, as Melany handed her id to this woman, she was falsely accused of being under age and using a fake id. After arguing with her she allowed us to buy our much needed ambrosia.

Alternative scenario to this mishap: refusing our licenses, thus forcing us to travel to the next town which to our bad luck would have been dry. *

* Dear readers, this did not occur. Victory was ours!!*

Heading to Ft. Stockton (80 miles)

Angela: Let's play that game where you do, it's like connecting?!? artists and the movies?? "alguien me entiende"
Melany: to us normal folk it's called 6 degrees of separation
Angela: I think "Connecting" sounds better

New Game: Connecting (aka 6 degrees of separation)
Here we figured out that the widely acclaimed movie Interview with the Vampire and Kirsten Dunst (the disgusting newly admitted rehab patient) are key links to everyone in Hollywood.
example: johnny depp and julia roberts
johnny depp -orlando bloom- Pirates of the Caribbean-orlando bloom-kirsten dunst- Elizabethtown-kirsten dunst-brad pitt - Interview with the Vampire-Brad Pitt- Julia Roberts - The Mexican.

**Warning: The following account is just now being released to the public**
Later on that night, as our journey continued, Angela and Melany decided to spook their fellow companions. We created a common hitchhiker story which Babs and Cynthia fell for. It was way too easy...for more details read the post, "Ooooh Spooky". During this Angela claims to have seen a ghost, Melany thinks she is off the reservation because it was clearly a reflection of herself in the window that night.
The sky out on Hwy 67 was as clear as can be. The stars at night were definitely big and bright...Angela was the first one to spot the Milky Way, the galaxy that we live in. It was absolutely stunning. After a few more miles, we finally made it to Marfa. It must have been 10 pm and like a typical small town, lights were already out. Upon entering the town, we began to search for our hotel, Casa Mirasol.

The streets in Marfa are extremely poorly labeled and it took us an extra 20 minutes to find our lodging. When we finally arrived at the quaint B&B we realized that we had to wait for our hotel manager to come over and let us in. It took him 15 minutes, the town can be circumnavigated in 20 minutes...so in Marfa time it seemed like it took forever.

Our cabin was called El Sol, the whole hotel was divided by two, El Sol and the other side was La Luna (we thought there were guests there the entire time). After unpacking and settling in we showered, ate, played a wicked game of Uno and proceeded to make our drinks. Angela and Cynthia scoped out the place for a can opener to use on the pineapple can, no luck, undettered Angela had to pull a Mcguyver move in which she used the car keys to open the can.


Afterwards we played Skipbo and in our drunken stupor began to examine melany's camera, we are now experts in taking macro pictures and swapping colors on the elph camera.


After 7 hours on the road, we retired for the night.

Bunking arrangements were as follows, Angela/Cynthia on bed #1 Babs/Melany on bed #2 (yeah right...that would never happen) instead the two Peruvians made themselves comfy on one bed while the two Texans snoozed in the other.

note: Angela, claims that Melany froze her to death that night by putting the thermostat to 70 (totally reasonable temp) she did however, remember that Melany is a human furnace so she didn't complain.