February,2001 page three            click on the "forward" box above to see page 4(our earlier adventures this month) or "back" to return to page one and two of February.         

February 21, 2001        We've had a busy week with many activities and some exploring of the area.  The big Valentine's Day party here at Holiday Village had a "cruise" theme.  The clubhouse was elaborately decorated and 200 people jammed in for dinner and entertainment by a pretty decent Elvis impersonator.  One day, as former residents of Jackson, Michigan and members of the M.O.B.,  we attended a buffet lunch for all the people here in the valley who are from Michigan.  We saw some old friends, met some new ones, and even won some door prizes.  On Saturday we checked out some of the "tourist attractions" in Mission.  First was the Tom Landry Mural.  The former coach of the Dallas Cowboys is from Mission and there is a large mural collage of many events in his life and career.  He and many of the Cowboys players left their hand and footprints in the cement.  Oddly, the mural is on the side of a building that houses a " $.99 Store."  Next stop was an aloe farm.  There are acres and acres of the cactus that are harvested and used to make gels and lotions for use on your skin.  Another spot we visited was the Benston-Rio Grande State Park.  This is prime "birding season" and the park was full of homemade bird feeders hanging in the trees and people sitting around watching all of them through their binoculars.  The campground was particularly interesting as many of the RVs were surrounded by the feeders.  Needless to say, they weren't too pleased with noisy hikers (that might have been us "crunching along the trails.")   Sunday night's entertainment was provided by a local family - a schoolteacher and his wife and 6 children - all of Mexican decent who sang and played various musical instruments very well.  The wife had a beautiful voice and had taught her husband to play the guitar and bass to play along with her.  Their oldest daughter (15) has taught herself to play keyboards and accordion, the second and third daughter are taking various lessons and all sing, and the boys (ages 6,3, and 1) do pretty well on percussion.  It was a quite enjoyable group. 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday the 21st was another of those "food days."  We started off with a (free) breakfast at the Golden Corral with the Thousand Trails Campgrounds organization.  We met up with Fred and Donna Redial who had been parked next to us at Lake Conroe last month.  They had followed our route several weeks behind us and are now in a park near us here.  They also have children and grandchildren in Ohio and are "fulltimers."  We hope to see them again sometime.   Then at 2:00 we went to a Bounder potluck lunch at another of the many, many RV parks here in the valley, Green Gate Grove.  This park is quite nice, but to stay here you must buy a lot.   The food was great and the people fun, as usual with a Bounder get-together. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 12, 2001,      Sitting in one place, we have gotten into a new routine.  Daytime activities involve taking care of RV maintenance and errands and a little shopping.  Tom played bridge one afternoon.  We continue to walk the park frequently and have been to the pool and hot-tub.  Evenings find us at the clubhouse playing the "game of the night."  We've learned a few new games ("Pitch" and "Marbles and Jokers") and there are others we haven't gotten into as yet.  Mary won "Jackpot" four games out of ten one evening.    On Thursday, we went with our friends from the M.O.B., Pat and Ralph North, to visit other M.O.B. members, Mary and Harold Morgan who are staying in a park about 10 miles from us, north of Edinburgh.  We sat and visited in their new RV for more than 3 hours before we finally decided we needed to eat, and all went for delicious and huge stuffed baked potatoes at a place called Willy's Bar-B-Que.  It was great!  Friday brought another free meal while attending a financial planning seminar.  On Saturday we went to the Farmer's Market and Flea Market in Weslaco.....fantastic buys on beautiful produce....best deal was HUGE, sweet pineapples for $1.50...and a lot of items that look very strange to us but I'm certain the Hispanic population puts to good use.  Our afternoon aerobics that day was learning to do the "schottische." (It's sort of like a line dance in a circle).    Sunday morning the rain and clouds had returned - and stayed all day.  But morning chapel was held during a Valentine Brunch with Branson entertainers providing the music.  It was certainly an unusual type service, but neat! (Prayers, hymns and eggs benedict)    Later we had Mary's parents for dinner to celebrate Edith's birthday.  Fixing a big dinner is always a challenge in the RV!   Between dinner and the evening ice cream social we practiced playing "pitch" and after the ice cream and more entertainment by a pretty good 12-year old singer we tried to remember how to play "Marbles and Jokers" with a group at the clubhouse.  Food, games and music are staples around here...but we're enjoying it all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Monday we went with a group from the park to South Padre Island.  We took our bikes and spent several hours riding up and down the streets of the island taking several breaks to go down and walk on the beach - wearing our new helmets - aren't they cute?  (We're trying to be safety conscious!)  After lunch at a neat place called "Blackbeard's" we went with another couple back to the beach to try our hands at flying stunt kites.  It was fun!!  But we still need a lot of practice.  It was helpful to have a partner to pick up the kite and untangle the lines when the kite nose-dived into the sand!  We also drove out to the "uninhabited " part of the island where many RVs have just pulled up along the beach and set up camp...it's all free!  And surprisingly clean and orderly.  The island atmosphere reminded us very much of Daytona Beach and Myrtle Beach.

We have had a few quiet days in between all of our adventures...days spent doing wonderful things like laundry and searching out  good places to get haircuts and the usual afternoons and evenings playing cards and games.  Since the weather has been consistently in the 80's the last week or so, we've also been to the pool quite a bit.  We've been to Camping World and the local Bounder dealer and a few other odd places taking care of "nuisance" maintenance items on the coach.  In walking around our RV park we've seen lots of other types of RVs.  Here's a photo of the most unusual outfit we've encountered........................................................... that's a '53 Ford and a trailer I don't think we could stand very tall in.  It has a "kitchen" and a bed, and they drove here from Illinois.  Should we trade in the Bounder for a similar unit???

 

 

February 12, con't.                                                          Over the weekend we finally had some sun, so we walked and got our bikes down for some riding,   We attended the park's movie night on Saturday and learned how to play shuffleboard on Sunday.  Monday the 12th brought another adventure as we went with a group from the park to the LosEbanos crossing on the Rio Grande River.  We took the only hand powered ferry across a US border into Mexico.  We took our bikes and rode about 2 miles into the town of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz where we just rode around and waved at the little kids before reversing the trip.  The ferry holds 3 cars and whatever pedestrians and stuff fit along side the cars.  Several men stand along one side of the ferry and pull on cables tied to trees on either side of the river - and the ferry floats gently across.  There was quite a line-up waiting on both sides.

February 6, 2001         We're becoming "regulars" here at Holiday Village.  Our impending arrival had been announced by Edith and Fran so we're greeted with many friendly "Oh, you're the daughter and son-in-law!" There are activities all day long and into the evening for us to participate in if we choose.  We arrived here on Monday, Jan 29 and went that evening to a pot-luck dinner with bingo afterwards.  On Tuesday it was the game of jackpot (Mary was a winner).  Wednesday brought breakfast with a financial planning seminar and dinner with entertainment.  Thursday was euchre night (Tom won here).  There was plenty more that we passed on.

It also was a pretty productive week.  We had gotten the RV and car washed down while staying in Mission and Tom changed all the water filters  (what a difference that made!).  After moving into Holiday Village we finished up the windows and some touch-ups. We've also caught up on laundry and Tom has been tracking our expenses on the computer.  We've also started looking at possibilities for the next leg of our trip.  One afternoon we attended a "health fair" at the convention center and enjoyed the free entertainment as well as taking part in some free health screenings.  The weather however, seems to have followed us from Mississippi....it was 55* and rain for several days!  We went to Progresso, Mexico on Thursday morning, starting out from the park before it was raining.  By the time we got to the bridge, it was raining steadily.  We walked across the bridge where we were surprised by the people standing below the bridge with long poles with bowls fashioned from upside down gallon jugs attached to them, banging them on the chain fence and singing up to us as we walked.  We walked several blocks looking in the shops but the rain made it a pretty miserable walk in the mud.  We'll go back again on a sunny day.

February, 2001 page four                   click the "back" box above to return to pages 1, 2, and 3 of February.

February,2001                                page two click on "forward" above to view pages  3 and 4 (our earlier adventures in February) or "back" to return to page one of February.

February 28, 2001           

Our last week in the lower Rio Grande valley has been a busy one.  It doesn't seem as though we have been here five weeks, but on the other hand, we're ready to move on to more adventures.  The folks here at Holiday Village have been wonderful to us, and we have enjoyed hearing their tales of travel.  We look forward to sharing our trip to Alaska with them sometime next winter.  We've made the rounds of our "last night" attending various game and activities.  We also took in a few more of the local "tourist stops."   One was the Iwo Jima Memorial in Harlingen.  The original sculpture is displayed here, and the one at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. was cast from it.  One of the five men depicted in the sculpture was from one of the small towns here in the valley and was one of the entire senior class football team to join the Marines together during WWII.  There is also a very interesting museum next to the memorial which is located on the campus of The Marine Military Academy, a private boys boarding school.   

 

 

 

 

 Another interesting visit was to the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle-National Shrine in San Juan, Texas - just a few miles from our park.  This is a huge campus that has a hotel, cafeteria, retreat facilities, nursing home, book store and a beautiful, huge church.  We toured the church and saw where many people have brought momentos of their family to pray for thanks or help through illnesses, rough times and so on.  The outdoor stations of the cross are beautiful sculptures spread across the park-like campus.  A large mosaic is on the wall facing the freeway and the bell tower is visible for miles.  The church has some interesting architecture and is quite impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

The Forever Aloe Plantation in Mission was an interesting stop.  We watched the aloe stalks get washed and then crushed by rollers to squeeze the gel out and into large stainless vats.  From there it is strained to remove any bits of the stalks and then put into huge tankers (like milk trucks) and shipped to another plant where it is made into various lotions, gels, and yes, drinks!  The stalks are all hand-picked so as to not injure the growing plant which produces fresh usable stalks for about six years.

On our last day at Holiday Village we spent time catching up on laundry and getting the Bounder ready to travel.  The exposed parts of the slide and levelers were lubricated, batteries filled, bikes hung on the rear rack, windshield washed and loose items put away.  We had a nice dinner with Mary's parents and after attending a program at the club house, the Texas Whistler, given by our kite flying friends, the Narramores, had a farewell visit.  By 10pm the weather had returned to our typical travel weather - rainy and cold.  The overnight low went to 50* and the next morning we were in jeans and sweatshirts once again. We're sure the 80 degree spring will return soon - the cactus are starting to bloom and the orange blossoms are extremely fragrant in the park.  We said goodbye to the nice friends we've met and once again we're back on the road.

The Iwo Jima Memorial Harlingen, TX

Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle-National Shrine            San Juan, Tx

We got together with friends from Michigan one more time before leaving the valley.  One day we went to lunch with Harold and Mary Morgan who have been staying in a park in Edinburgh.  We had a fun afternoon visiting with them.  Ralph and Pat North took us to Mexico where we did some shopping and went to lunch.  Since the weather was hot and sunny we walked over much of the town of Progresso.  It has lots of dentist offices, barber shops, liquor/pharmacy stores, souvenir shops and places to eat. Many of the Winter Texans use these businesses regularly. There are large parking lots on both sides of the border depending on your insurance coverage and desire to walk across the bridge.      

 

February,2001                                page one  click on "forward" above to view page 2, 3, and 4  -  our adventures in February.