Each time we drive down here to the bottom of Texas we realize it is a long journey even after we hit the state line coming south. But this map below really puts it into perspective:
The graphic shows 13 different U.S. states tucked inside Texas. If you can zoom in you will see the name of the states on the left. Now you know the rest of the story.
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After yesterdays games - it will be the L.A. Rams vs the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl in two weeks.
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About a mile from our RV park here in southern Texas is the start of a walkng/bicyle path that takes a person out through the "boonies". The trail as about four miles long and terminates at a restroom/parking area. Bill has ridden the trail three times, so far this year, and each time has seen some of these feathered creatures below:
Do you see that white package in the driveway we now receive early every morning?
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We knew there were Great Horned Owls down here in Texas because, in most years, we have heard their calls off in the distance at night while we were outside. It has been different this year as we have been hearing a couple of owls so close and loud that their calls to each other come right through the walls of our RV.
On a recent daytime walk we noticed an object in this tree just the other side of the laundry room:
Yesterday, we drove to downtown McAllen to do some shopping and have an evening dinner out. It was getting dark when we left the restaurant and this is what we saw, above the streets, when we were done eating:
Whereas, in former years we used to watch the sun drop beneath the horizon every evening from our back window.....
Now the sunlight gets filtered through the border wall, so the sun beams appear to be coming through the teeth of giant comb! (above and below)
As you can see, the relatively new border wall is only about 200 yards from our lot. There is a chain link fence, a road and a canal between us and the wall. It is still being constructed nearby by the state of Texas.
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In this semi-arid area of Texas it takes a lot of black dirt, seed, sprinkling, and attention to have a green lawn of real grass. Therefore, in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Mission you see plenty of yards like this:
With the different variants of Covid that are starting to evolve - we thought it may be helpful to point out this new one that was discovered northwest of us up in the Rocky Mountains:
Once a week, usually Tuesday afternoons, a local man drives into our RV park pulling a trailer and blowing his horn for all to hear. He is known as the Veggie Man for a reason:
Our two-month winter stay this year is again at Bentsen Palm Village RV Resort --> https://www.bentsenpalm.com/active-adult/rv-resort/ near Mission, Texas. We are only about a half-mile from the Rio Grande River and Mexico. It is a relatively small resort, as far as south Texas resorts go, but it is modern with only full hookups.
Our resort is next door to this Texas State Park which is a World Birding Center. We can get a free pass into the state park anytime while staying here. Birders from all over the world come here because of the huge variety of birds one can see.
A Mission RV resort, down the road, sponsored a craft show last Saturday that we decided to check out. Kind of like a large garage sale, one never knows what he/she may find. Skilled craftspeople from various RV parks are invited to peddle their wares, for a small fee, of course.
This old boy above, in the brown shirt, was a very skilled woodworker. He had a delicate touch with a band saw and made dog puzzles of almost any/every breed. Horses too. If you did not see your pet on display - you only had to ask him and he would created it for you in a week for $15.00.
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This motor home is parked next to us, and their dog is never a bother.
The other day we noticed this parking sign in the RV park near the front of a driveway,,,
We have not seen any vehicles parked nearby so it must be doing its intended job.
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The last two times we spent the winter months in Texas we sometimes visited the kiosk below that is down the road in front of the Dollar General. We joined their membership, and maybe once a week would rent a DVD to watch - then return it the next day.
Now, with our almost unlimited data available from Verizon and a phone hot spot, as well as our ROKU, we have access to not only all the football games, but also Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus.
Other than the nightly news and Jeopardy - we do not watch much TV down here. But when we feel the urge, we have plenty to choose from without a trip down to Redbox.
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Bill recently rode his bicycle to a store to buy lottery tickets for Karen and picked up the local, daily 75- cent newspaper.
Inside, we could not help but to notice this ad, below, that we had never seen before:
Nancy and Phil Smoker, from Vicksburg, came over from their Mission, Texas RV park to play card bingo with us at our clubhouse on Saturday. As a quick refresher - everyone brings 4 dimes, 4 quarters, and three dollars, and eleven games of card bingo are played. Last night there were 52 participants.
AND........
Above are two happy winners back in the camper at the end of the night. Nancy won a quarter game for 52 quarters and Bill, for the first time, won one of the three dollar games - for $52.00.
Not bad for a fun evening of gambling!
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This graphic below showed up in our email today, out of the blue, from Google:
It shows us an encapsulated picture of our travel routes in 2021. As you can see it includes our trip to Montana in the Spring, our trip on the upper Mississippi River in the Fall, as well as our drive to south Texas at the end of December. Not bad during another pandemic year, just risky?
No wonder criminals use burner, or throw away phones, when they are out and about committing crimes.
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A Peccary, or Javelina in Spanish, is a medium-sized pig-like hoofed mammal. They live in many places including this southern area of Texas, are active at night, and we occasionally see a dead one along the road.
Next is a video you might find interesting if you have not seen it.
We are not sure where this farm harvest took place but it shows how prolific these creatures can be.
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On Wednesday afternoons not only does the food truck come to the park .....
With loud music playing in the background -
After a drink or two these seniors think they are kids again.
Can't you tell??
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We thought the sign on the front of this golf cart makes a lot of sense.:
Thanks again to the non-understood wonders of today's technology...
and a little luck
last night we were able to get our ROKU to hook to our phone's hot spot and into our Spectrum home account to watch the NCAA Final National Championship Football game in our travel trailer.
With a good bit of teamwork, and only a few choice cuss words, we managed to get the new heavy mattress into the RV, out of the box, opened up, and spread out on top of the old one.
It was built in the USA and had almost no smell. Also -
It fit!!!
It is soft and luxurious compared to the old one.
No more sore hips in the morning, hopefully.
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Karen has been shopping on the internet, and this package below arrived at the RV park office on Saturday via FedEx....
Not far from our site in the park we noticed that people were sometimes stopping and looking up at a palm tree along the road. Upon closer inspection we saw what was drawing all the attention.
We could not help but notice that the temperature back home this Friday morning was 3 degrees. We have also seen on the recent news that there have been some pretty decent snowstorms across the Northeast United States. The snow has caused numerous traffic accidents and delays.
Therefore, we pass along this advice to any who are not still working:
We have found that these instructions work pretty well.
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Just what we needed!
A weekly Wednesday hot food truck.
Pretty fancy - right??
It serves up hot beef brisket tacos, chicken tacos, stuffed baked potato, and beef and chicken nachos.
It only serves food from its widow for a couple of hours and is gone. No drinks no frills. A Ma and Pa business, no doubt.
Of course we had to try it.
Not bad, but Karen says we won't hurry back next week.
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After a couple of very cool nights the weather in the bottom of Texas is warming back up. We have both started riding our bicycles for fun, exercise and adventure.
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We now have a new obstacle blocking our view of the sunsets each evening. As you can see, the border wall is just across the road from where our trailer is parked.
Two years ago, when we were last here, there was no wall at all.
We awoke Sunday morning to a howling wind that was shaking the trailer and dropping temperatures outside. We saw wind gusts of up to 45 MPH and a high temp of only 55 degrees. Quite a difference from the high of 92 degrees the day before!
People taking walks were wearing stocking hats and gloves.
Temperatures here in the Rio Grande Valley hit 92 degrees on New Years Day
The park had a "Polar Bear Plunge" at the swimming pool with hot dogs and chili, so we joined the group for lunch. (The pool feels like dish water now but cooler weather is coming.)
Karen picked up her phone/camera and took these nature pictures below for the blog:
Our RV park has cable TV hookups included in the lot rent, but we soon found out that the service presented a major problem for us:
No ESPN channel to watch college football. Therefore, we had figure out how to connect to ESPN or go rent a motel room for Friday evening to watch the college playoffs.
Luckily, Bill happened to bring along one of our ROKU devices. A ROKU connection makes any TV into a "smart" TV that will connect to the internet. With a few calls to Charter/Spectrum and some password updates - we were up and running in our travel trailer at no extra cost.
Now for the bad news - Georgia walloped Michigan 34 - 11 in the Orange Bowl. Ouch!
Hopefully the Wolverines will be back again next year,
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