Staying in Spittin' Distance of Mexico

The really cold weather seems to be over (wait until I find some wood to knock on) but the clouds are hanging around. Much better than at home, though! As soon as you get away from the border, it cools down significantly. San Antonio is still having lows in the 30's, so I'm delaying that move north as long as possible. That seems to be next week, when I head to Houston to meet my friends, Sally and Ron. Until then I'll be staying in Mission.

I left here and headed to Brownsville, traveling on the farthest south road in Texas, Highway 281. It's called a highway, but is two narrow lanes all the way. It was much better than taking the expressway, because instead of seeing miles of Wal-Marts, chain restaurants, and strip malls, I got to see some of the real, predominately Mexican Texas. All of their cemetaries are decorated beautifully, with very colorful flowers on every grave, and huge ribbons all along the fence. I'll try to get a picture and post it here. There were a lot of cabbage fields, and sugar cane, which is being harvested right now.

I spent another week in Brownsville at a fantastic RV Park, Winter Haven. Three swimming pools, a big hot tub, and beautiful fountains in the Resacas. Of course, it was too cold to use the pools or hot tubs, but they really did look great! I traveled there with Mike and Shirley who hadn't been down this way before, so we did some touristy sight-seeing in the area. We went to Port Isabel three times, twice on our way to South Padre Island, and once to have dinner at a very good seafood restaurant. We also went to the Gladys Porter Zoo, which is rated as one of the top 10 zoos in the country. It was very nice, except for the exhibit of tarantulas, scorpions, and poisonous snakes. There's a saying that there are 2000 species of poisonous snakes and all of them are found in Texas.

A funny zoo story: Shirley and I were standing looking across a moat at some monkeys, and one of them had a lump on it's chest and some slashes across its back. I said,"Looks like it has a tumor on it," and she said, "I wonder if it had incisions for something." I looked closer and said, "You know, I think its carrying a baby!" Turns out the "tumor" was the baby's head, and the "slashes" were the arms and legs. We were practicaly rolling on the ground laughing!

We went into Nueve Progresso, Mexico on the way back to Mission and all the streets were full of the awful, slippery mud that forms from wet clay. We did have a very good meal at a restaurant the seemed very clean and was really popular with the tourists. It was the best meal I've had since leaving home, and none of us got sick! (Yet...)

Hasta Luego!