For Sale - Used Car, Needs Work

The first time I saw this car on the street in Marfa, we were going fast enough that it didn't register quickly enough.  But the second time I told Stan to stop!  I had to photograph this!  I jumped out of the car with the toy camera and made about 8 exposures, four of them close, like this and four like the one below.  I like the photograph below for a sense of place, but I think the impact of the close up is a great way to begin the blog.  Please click on this because it is an extra large image and you can see it in better detail.  I have never seen a car this beat up, on the street. Ever!  I guess in New York State this car wouldn't even be allowed on the street because there is no way it would pass inspection looking like this.  I guess in Texas the requirements are less stringent. 

 

Green Sotol, Again

Believe it or not, I showed you this Sotol plant yesterday, but as a close up looking down into the plant.  Then I stepped away from it, and crouched down, and I put the camera almost on the ground and did this photograph so that I could get the mountain in the background.  So interesting after looking in detail into the plant to see what it really looks like from the outside.  You might not guess that this is the same plant as yesterday, but it is.

 

Green Sotol

At one of our many stops where we parked the car and walked around, I spotted this plant.  I believe it is a "Green Sotol" which is in the same family as the "skeleton" I showed you the other day.  But these leaves are much thinner than the broad ones in the dead plant I showed you.  And look at the sharp "hooks" all along each leaf!  You would not want to fall into one of these plants accidentally.  Watch where you walk!  I believe that at a time in the future, a central stalk will appear, as you saw in the other plant I photographed.  Be sure and click on this to see more detail!

 

Lenticular Cloud

We had stopped to eat our sandwiches for lunch while out exploring.  Stan said "Hey, look at that cloud over the peak!  I immediately grabbed my camera, thinking that this looked like a spaceship hovering over the top of this eroded mountain.  I recognized it right away as a lenticular cloud, Lenticular clouds are stationary clouds that form mostly in the troposphere.  They are often comparable in appearance to a lens or saucer. As air travels along the surface of the Earth, obstructions are often encountered, including natural features, such as mountains or hills,  which disrupt the flow of air into "eddies", or areas of turbulence.  If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops below the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. This cloud sat there, unchanging in its appearance for all the time we were having lunch.

 

The Century Plant

This is known as a Century Plant.  Its name is Havard Agave and believe it or not, it is a member of the Asparagus Family!  This species lives for 8 to 30 years before blooming, setting seed and dying.  It is astounding looking, right?  When I mentioned to the woman at the reception desk that I had photographed it, she said "You are looking at a skeleton."   That had never occurred to me even though I could see that the plant was dead, as you can see.  The leaves at the bottom are all brown and hanging down. 

What's really wonderful is that the National Park Service doesn't knock it down and take it away - they leave it to decompose on its own, as a lesson about the life of this plant.

And look how beautiful and complex the top of the plant is!  I would love to see one of these in bloom sometime.  In fact, I think I will go look up photos online of one of these in bloom.

 

A Slight Change of Plan

Today is our day to fly home.  It is an early flight at 7:11.  We were up at 3:15 AM and our car was turned in and we were through security and sitting at the gate before sunrise.  Saw this aircraft being moved by a tug to take it away from the gate.

This is my view of the plane next to us from my seat as we prepared to push back.  Tug pushed us back from the gate and we awaited engine starts.  But we sat there and sat there and heard some strange noises but had no idea what was going on.  After 10 or 15 minutes the captain announced they couldn't start the right engine!  So we were pulled back to the gate and everyone got off the plane.  The short version is after an hour they still didn't know and an hour after that they took all our baggage off the plane.  Not a good sign!  So after all that delay we talked to a gate agent and because the next plane to DFW wasn't until 5 PM today, he suggested we fly from El Paso, to Chicago, and then on to New York.  We elected to do that because it seems like a more sure thing.

Here is a couple across from us trying to figure how they could get to where they were going.  The pilot and first officer left the plane and as they came through the gate area I followed them and got to ask what caused the problem, and they were really nice and explained some technical things, but they still didn't know what the problem was.  The one thing that was annoying is, we had to leave the secure area, go fetch our bags, and then start checkin and go through TSA security all over again!  

We are not sure when the mechanic arrived because some of them were working on the rear of the plane where the Auxiliary Power Unit is installed, but they told us that was not the problem.  So we watched him work for a bit.  We were no longer going to take our original flight but they kept setting back the time it would finally leave for DFW.

Then a couple of hours later this notice appeared on the screen behind the gate agents!  "Flight Canceled!"

Man oh man, we made, with the gate agent, the right decision to switch routes.  We may actually get home tonight!  More news tomorrow.  As I finish this, our aircraft is just pulling in to the gate, and we should be boarding soon!

 

A Walk to Breakfast

We left Big Bend National Park yesterday and drove to Marfa, Texas because we wanted to see and photograph some of the works of Donald Judd at the Chinati Foundation.  More on that in another post. This morning we woke and decided to walk from our hotel to a breakfast place we found.  We could not go more than 50 feet without finding something to photograph, such is the nature of the buildings in Marfa.  This is the old Godbold feed mill which has been a landmark in town forever.  It was recently sold and will become a distillery and a restaurant.  But this is a classic scene all over parts of Texas.  I photographed the first one of these I ever saw in San Angelo, TX when I went to visit my friend Ginger back in February of 2007.