Tours2005pg04

Montana Tours of 2005

The weather has been nice, over all, the average temps are up to around 80 degrees during the day. We have had a few days of 85 to 90, had one that was 99, ooeee, that was warm! Have to remember tho, that here it is mostly dry heat, and that does make it a bit more tolerable than 99 with the humidity we get in Michigan. Needless to say, there have been a number of visits to the pool and hot tub and therapy tub (water in a thearpy tub is not as hot as a real hot tub, but still has all those wonderful jets of water to help get rid of the sore spots).

We have made several trips to Mexico, the shopping is always fun there, we have great lunches, and come back. We were even able to attend “Winter Texan Appreciation Day” in Progreso, Mexico. That was QUITE the experience. Some free food, people everywhere, entertainment stages up and down the streets. We discovered a new shopping area, very colorful and fun, off the main drag one block, worth the walk!

We also have been to the flea market a few times, did a little shopping, mostly the $2.50 t-shirts and cheap hats for Al! I found bathing suits for me for $5.00 a piece. Yep, I bought some, 4 of em, to be exact! Must be discontinued suits, but since I am no fashion expert and so out of the loop, like, who cares! HAHA.

The Rio Grande Valley is well known for its fruits and vegetables, below are photos from one of the larger fruit markets we have found. The prices are very reasonable, beats the grocery store prices by far!

We attended the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show here in Mercedes. This is a form of our 4-H county fairs, the youth show the livestock they have been raising, only here they show a LOT more cows and steers than I remember in Michigan. They have arts & crafts for sale, carnival rides, junk food, vendors, etc. They have rodeo several evenings a week (we did not attend, heard it was quite good tho). They have fireworks and a parade. We could see the fireworks from our trailer, just stood in the door way and watched! They take their bar-b-que quite seriously in Texas, as you can see by this photos!

All these smokers/cookers were made by individuals for this fair competition. They were made of very heavy gauge metals. The lids were so heavy I could barely lift one, and it was a small cooker.

I know, first thought, is that animal would be a lot of steaks and meat for those cookers! This was a LARGE animal!

Below: A 1903 John Deere Chuck Wagon. This type of wagon would be loaded up with coffee, beans, flour, rice and cured meats for cattle drives. There was a nice demonstration about cattle drives at the Rio Grande Livestock Show

Other musings and mumblings from things seen over the last few weeks:

They have a drive in movie (anyone remember those) a mile or so away from here, we can see the screen at night, not the movie, just that it is there. $5.00 a car full of people to enter!

Saw corn 4 inches high a few weeks ago, now it is about 8 inches high.

They are harvesting fields of onions! They also harvest sugar cane here, part of the process is burning the fields or something, problem is that this burning produces large amounts of soot, large hunks of soot, that fly for miles. It is a bit of a problem here at this park, it gets in the pool, and all over your rig and truck and the grass. Sounds a bit romantic growing sugar cane, the harvesting of same, is NOT romantic, is is black and dirty.

The orange and grape fruit trees are in bloom, the smells are too wonderful to even try to describe.

The spring flowering bushes are also in bloom. The colors are fab! People are planting their annuals, pansies, petunias, geraniums, all great looking, healthy, large and full of blooms.

Many of the Winter Texans leave as of March 1st, looked like at least 100 pulled out of this park on March 1st. Since then, many more have left. I think we have an acre of empty lots around us! (Not quite, but entire rows at this park have NO rigs.) Most of us that are left will be leaving April 1st, gonna be a traffic jam out there on the highways that day!

Someone was playing the bagpipes here in the campground one evening. OK, they were still learning, missed a few high notes, but I surely did not expect to hear anything like that!

We had another gathering of MOC members in the Valley, a much smaller group, but still had an enjoyable afternoon and evening visiting and comparing stories on Montanas.

We are scheduled to leave the Rio Grande Valley on April 1, 2005. We will head home, first stop along the way will be Fredericksburg, Texas for Wildflower time. We are told it is fabulous. After Fredericksburg we have no definative plans, YET!