South Texas, Great Month

We're now at three weeks in the Rio Grande Valley and it couldn't be better.  Of course the weather is the best part with daytime temperatures reaching into the high 80's, even low 90's, and nights down in the 60's or high 50's.  How could we ask for more, there hasn't been a drop of rain since we got here, and Amber, no SNOW either.

Most of our friends are here now in fact some are already leaving.  Many of our American friends leave to go home for Thanksgiving, next weekend, and stay there for Christmas.  So this week the Winter Texan crowd thins a bit until after next weekend and then there is a big influx.  After Christmas and New Years everyone arrives in force.  All 1.3 million of us are here for a couple of months and then it thins out again until the end of March when it's pretty well done for another year.  The locals like that time best, they get their valley back, the lineups are gone, the prices come back down and life is good again.

We're having fun with the birds this year.  I bought a cheap bag of bird seed and hung a feeder out back, along with a clear plastic plant pot holder (water catcher) that I filled with a few small rocks and fresh water.  We have birds like crazy and they seem to love to bathe in the plastic pot holder.  Ever seen a woodpecker take a bath?  We hadn't either but he did a couple of days ago.  I think it's the same one I wanted to execute a couple of winters back when he was eating our house.  He survived that winter and paid us back this winter by taking a bath in our little bird bath.  Of course we get sparrows grabbing a free meal but they have to eat to.  There are some pretty neat birds showing up that we don't see at home and I certainly can't name.  Bernie and I were walking a week or so ago and came across a flock of wild parrots.  We have been told they're here from time to time but that was our first sighting.

The picture is from S. Padre Island.  Kind of a nice beach.

A pinched nerve in my back and the consequnces of it are keeping me off of the dance floor and even walking is a chore.  Bernie is having to go at that all alone.  I think it's improving but it is turning into quite an ordeal.

Monday we'll be taking our first trip into Mexico.  There only seems to be one safe place anymore, which happens to be Progresso, our favourite anyway.  We're going down, with Bob and Lynn, for our favourite lunch at The Red Snapper and doing a couple of touristy things.  Things are pretty ugly along the border these days so we'll be sticking to the busy streets and main street shops.  I don't think there is a day goes by that the local paper doesn't have a story about Mexican violence.  We had a guy from U.S. Boarder patrol at our meeting on Thursday morning.  He went to great lengths to explain to us the W5 of this whole mess.  He certainly didn't have the answers.  Since we're only 5 miles form the border and an International Bridge/crossing point it is on everyone's mind quite a bit.  Since it's all drug and drug cartel related it doesn't have much effect on anyone local.  It just keeps us from enjoying Mexico the way we should be able to.

We have to go early tomorrow so we can get back in time for "Dancing with the Stars."  I give in, and force myself, to watch it with Bernie every week.  I just detest :-) having to watch those female dancers and their terrible costumes, but you know how it is, "Happy Wife, Happy Life."  Speaking of this, how about that Bristol Palin?  Can that girl dance or what......   :-)    Do you think politics might be involved here ????????????  I love it.  Since I plan to spend about 7 hours watching two CFL games tomorrow I can hardly complain.

We had our truck into Freightliner last week to run a couple of test.  It looks like we need a new throttle position sensor which I'll install myself.  I have no idea what a throttle position sensor is or where it sits in the truck, but Darcy our from Integrity Diesel in Steinbach is once again coaching me through the process.  I'd be sooooo lost without him.  I'll post the results here, you'll be the first to know.

I broke the signal light lever on the Smart car a week ago tonight.  Mercedes Benz has offered to tow it to San Antonio ($600+) so we can have a new one installed.  The problem is the nearest new one is in Germany (so they say) and can't be here until Dec. 28th or later.  Interesting........tow the car, sit on it for 6 weeks, hope the part comes in, leave the customer hung out to dry.  Great service, great warranty, just no parts.  Seems to me that if they really gave a _______ about their customer that part would have been on an a plane to Texas a few days ago.  In the interim we're strengthening our left arm and it works out OK.   

We're off to the McAllen Concert Hall tonight to watch a brass and strings band from Dallas.  They come highly recommended so it should be fun.

Thanks for stopping by and do leave a comment when you can.

Neal & Bernie

Settled in for the winter

http://picasaweb.google.com/fisherneal1/Winter20102011PharrTX#

Greetings from Pharr, TX., where we HAVE to run the air conditioner every day :-)

We've been here a week now and have things pretty well organized.  It took a few days to wash the trailer, car, and truck, to refill the fridge, and rest up a bit.  Now it's time to get down to the serious business of happy hours, dinners with friends, exercising,  going to the pool, stained glass class, gym, shopping, (Bernie's all alone on that one) going to the ocean, and on and on.  We're already back to trying to figure out how to fit it all into our schedule.

I have inserted a link (above) that will take you to some pictures if you're interested.  The picture I inserted here is to show where we set up our 5r for the winter.  We picked out this lot last fall and planned to be here if the 5r would fit and it did.  That tree to the left is an orange tree that provides me a with a nice fresh, sweet, orange for my breakfast every day.  I only pick them in the AM so they can fresh and cool for breakfast.  Sucks to be us...... :-)

We have had a great week although the  first few days were all catch up.  You wouldn't believe the road grime we had to take off of the 5r from two weeks on the road.  We didn't have any rain at all on the way down but we sure did have tons of road grime to wash off.  We got the fridge stocked, the flowers planted, the grass seeded, the stretch mat down, the bird feeder up, the bird bath down, and now we get to start all of the fun things.

Today we start our dance classes once again.  Friends/dance teachers Bob and Lynn (picture in the link above) are ready to take us on for the fourth straight year so we're good to go.  We haven't danced a step in 7 months so it will take a couple of lessons to get our legs back.  Bernie has been going to the gym, we've been walking, I have my bicycle all tuned up, so we plan to leave here in better shape than we are now.

Last Sunday Bob and Lynn took us to the "Shrimp Festival" in Brownsville/Port Isabelle.  It's quite an experience.  Imagine a huge area fenced in by a few dozen booths and inside each booth some restaurant or company is trying to get you to try their "Best Shrimp Dish."  In the center is a huge tent, holding a few hundred people, with a really good band blasting music from the 50's, 60's, 70's (they know the target market down here), the beverages are very cold, the sun is very hot, and nobody even mentions the swear word "calories."  Following way too many samples we went to a local eatery for some of the best shrimp Bernie and I have ever found.  This place uses some kind of spice in the batter of their butterfly shrimp that makes me drool, I could go back every day.  Fortunatelyy it's an hour away and we only go twice each winter.  Of course we have to follow it up with Italian Ice Cream from the shop on S. Padre Island.

From the restaurant we drove to S. Padre Island, for the previously mentioned ice cream.  There was a kite competition going on with every imaginable kind of kite in the air.  The wind here makes it a great spot for the sport.  Friends of Bob and Lynn just won a "World Championship" for precision flying.  They, along with three others, compete with small kites and fly them (8 of them) in precision maneuvers.  Teams come from Canada, Australia, and Europe to compete.  There are kites as big as cars, (see picture of fish kite in the link) kites of all shapes (see dog and bone in the link) and hundreds more.  It's an experience.

So that's about it for today.  I have to go and pick that fresh orange for breakfast, put on a pot of coffee, and wake my bride.  She likes to wake up to the smell of fresh coffee and I like to make it for her.

Have a great day, thanks for stopping by, and please do leave a comment when you can.

Neal

Black Hills SD, Oklahoma City OK, Pharr TX

Greetings from Texas, we made it.........  Almost exactly two weeks on the road and we're suffering with 90+ degree Texas heat.  Oh well, we'll just have to tough it out.

It's nice to be settled down for a few months after a really amazing trip.  As I mentioned before we really enjoyed SD's Badlands and the Black Hills were beautiful.  We only stayed in the area for five days but we'll certainly be back and hopefully for a couple of weeks.  We had no idea what was there and were just awe struck with what we found.  I'd bet next weeks food budget we'll be slowly riding The Needles Highway on next summer's motorcycle tour.  If you've been there you know what I mean, if you haven't seen it get going.

We left SD for Oklahoma City for a few days of sight seeing and visiting with our friends Jim and Lois McDowell.  They treated us like royalty and we had a great time.  Thank you both so much.

We spent almost an entire afternoon at The Cowboy Museum.  We went there expecting to see lots of hats, boots, and shiney buckles.  NOT.  It would be easy to spend a couple of days in the museum, and it could be a very educational experience.  The history one can see and learn there is unbelievable.  I really enjoyed looking at the clothing, and weapons used by the US Army/Calvary dating back to the early 1800's.  They have all kinds of original eqipment, no reproductions, saddles, rifles, clothing, and on and on.  From there it moves forward through history right up to the current rodeo stars.

There is one entire section dedicated to movie equipment and the stars that used wore it.  As an example, I really enjoyed the movie "Quigley Down Under" and now Tom Selleck has donated a huge amount of the gear he used shooting the movie to the museum.  Yes - I did get to see a pair of Roy Rogers cowboy boots :-).
 
There is a ton of Native American history in there as well.  Bernie and I were blown away when we looked at a giant map of N. America that showed the dozens and dozens of different tribes that inhabited our entire continent and the general areas they lived on. 

There's a bunch of information on the buffalo herds and how they were hunted to the verge of etinction.  One comment that stuck in my head was an interview a Eastern newspaper did with a buffalo hunter who claimed to have shot 18000 (yes) buffalo by himself that week.  Just that one hunter.  The whole thing is mind blowing when taken in todays context.

Jim and Lois took us the the Oklahoma Memorial which is another amazing experience.  You stand there, on the very spot where 168 people died, in a split second, 15 years ago, and try to comprehend the magnitude of the event.  The memorial itself is an almost difficult experience.  It's beautiful, it's humbling, it's overwhelming, you can't help being touched when you see it.  For those that haven't seen it; they have set it up with brass and glass illuminated chairs, one chair for each victim.  To see 168 chairs lined up by the floor of the building they were on that terrible morning is tough enough, then you realize that the wee little chairs are for the children that died that day.  Will we go back? No, it's a tough one.  Are we glad we saw it? Yes.

So here we are at Tropic Star in Pharr for the fourth winter.  We were able to get on a lot we had picked out last spring and it's really nice.  We have a couple of palm trees out front, an orange tree at the front door, and a couple of huge __?__ trees out back.  Some of our friends are here and more are arriving all the time so it should be a fun winter.  Our neighbour to the back has been coming here for 33 years, is 86 years old, and just as spry as can be.  I was hanging a bird feeder tonight and he was out there telling me what kind of seed I should be using, before he invited us over for a drink.  Neat people.  The good news is I finally found someone that is more deaf than I am.  Ya, ya, ya, I know he's 86.

We talked to Bob and Lynn, our friends and dance instructors, tonight and it looks like we'll be "Dancing Wth The Stars" (in my dreams) in a few days.

Gotta go, thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment when you can.

Neal & Bernie