Mar 2007

In the morning we drive to Big Bend National Park and the sign outside the visitor's center says the two campgrounds we wanted to stay at are FULL. We're hoping that they just haven't updated the sign from the day before and ask at the visitor's center for an update. They have 5 sights left at the RV park, but the ranger is not optimistic of them being there when we get there and recommends for us to go to Cottonwood at the other end of the park. We decide to take our chances (we passed at least ten RVs leaving the park as we drove in) and drive down to Rio Grande Village. There are still 3 sights left at the RV park, but the RV park attendant calls over to the other campground to see if they have any sights left and the campground volunteer says they have 2 that will fit our size RV but they're going fast and we need to come immediately if we want one. So we quickly hop into the truck and go over to check out the two sights. One is kindof small for us but the other one looks perfect. We had to park very carefully but we fit and are happy campers :-)

After setting up camp we bike over to the Rio Grande Village visitors center and watch their 38 minute intro movie and get some helpful suggestions for hikes from the volunteers. Jere hears that the hot springs are near here and immediately wants to go to soak in the hot water.

The road to the hotsprings is an EXTREMELY narrow dirt road, with no guard rail and parts of it hug the side of a hill. Joe and Jere think that this is great fun -- I do not and I tell them to quit fooling around!!!

After looking at the historic buildings at the beginning of the trail,
we hike down to the springs, strip down to our bathing suits and hop in the hot (105 degree) water. I spend most of the time sitting on the wall of the spring with my feet dangling into the Rio Grande River. The river is really dirty/green looking and the one guy is saying we should not be doing this, but we all continue to do it anyway. Two of the people decide to go for a swim in the river and we watch but do not go in. We passed the Border Control coming into the spring and tell the guy swimming in the river "not to worry....if the U.S. border control comes by....we'll explain that we never saw him before, except for herding the cows on the Mexican shoreline earlier today" :-)

Jere talks me into sitting in the hot springs for several minutes, with the hope that it will help heal my back. It's supposed to have some sort of minerals in it to cure everything! At this point, I'll try anything. As a side note: my back is getting better, but it's been a long slow process.



After our soak we return to the campground and walk the nature trail that starts near our campsite. It takes us down to the Rio Grande River again and then we take the spur off the trail that leads to the top of the hill above the campground to watch the sunset, along with at least a dozen of our new friends. It's apparently a popular activity.

Our RV is the one closest to the beginning of the boardwalk:

Basically spent the whole day driving on a 2-lane road that followed the southern TX border and had scrub growth and cacti to look at. More border patrol stops, but they either wave us through or simply ask if we're US citizens. The road had fencing on both sides, with dirt roads on one or both sides of the fence, which we assume is for the border patrol. We even saw the border patrol smoothing the dirt road by dragging old tires....we're assuming it was to keep it smooth and enable them to see footprints/check for crossing points.

We did find it interesting that TX has these triangular blue & white signs on this road, "Drive Friendly". So polite.

For lunch we stopped at an overlook of the Pecos River canyon...very picturesque.

Our one stop was at the Judge Roy Bean museum and vistor center in Langtry. It had his original Lily Saloon and Billiardroom building to look at and a couple of displays.


We did see two roadrunners running across the road, so I got to mark them off in the birdwatching book that I bought at Padre Island National Seashore.

We stop at Marathon for the night, which is about 50 miles north of Big Bend National Park, our next destination. We don't have reservations there and they usually fill up in the afternoon so we'll head down tomorrow morning with the hopes of getting a campsite.

Marathon is a very small somewhat picturesque western town. We park the RV and then walk to town for a Mexican dinner at the local cafe.

Another Sunday morning and we're on the road so no church. We watched Hour of Power last night & this morning, but not the same thing. We haven't figured out how to attend church while on the road yet--it's hard since we normally have to check out of the campground by 11am and then we have a 35 ft trailer, which most churches do not have parking for. We'll figure it out eventually....I just found out that my bedroom closet has a light last night :-)

The drive to Laredo is uneventful. We're driving along the U.S./Mexico border so we have to stop every hour or so for a Border Patrol check. We stop for lunch at a picnic stop on top of a hill overlooking the Rio Grande River, so Mexico is easily visible. There's a 30-year-old hispanic man at the other picnic table, listening to loud music and occasionally doing push-ups. I'm sure he's either an undercover border patrolman or an illegal immigrant smuggler :-)

We stop at Lake Casa Blanca International State Park in Laredo, TX for the night. We debated driving another hour or two, but we're not sure there will be any campgrounds for at least 100 miles after Laredo and this park is nice. So we walk around the lake and campground for an hour or so, before having dinner and making a quick Wal-Mart run for supplies. Joe wants s'mores tonight and I ate the last chocolate bar several days ago--there were a couple days there when I just really needed a chocolate bar :-)

So in the evening we have the first campfire of the trip and our first s'mores!

Jere wants to go to a Brownsville Zoo that is supposed to be one of the nicest zoos in the nation. It has a nice gorilla area, but nothing much else is special about it. It was founded in the early 70s by a woman, Helen Porter, who wanted a zoo of endangered animals. Great concept, but I think the years have been unkind to it; probably running short of funding, so many exhibits are unoccupied/closed. However, it was interesting visiting a zoo where almost everyone else was speaking Spanish and even some of the signs are ONLY in Spanish. We spend about 2 hours there and then move on.

We've been advised to cross into Mexico at Progresso rather than Brownsville, so we drive to Progresso, park our car on the US side and walk over the Rio Grande to do a little shopping. Joe talks Jere into buying a hammock; Jere buys a cowboy hat and I buy a leather purse. Nothing special, but an interesting diversion for 2 hours. Many and maybe even most of the stores were selling either prescription drugs (over the counter, of course, no prescription needed) or dentist services. I never felt unsafe -- it was very crowded with US tourists.

We return to the senior citizen RV park for dinner and relaxing.

We see the end of the lunar eclipse before retiring for the evening. (It was too light here to see the beginning or total eclipse portion).

I get up today and walk outside and realize that the sun is just peaking over the ocean, so I grab the camera and go for a beachwalk as the sun rises.

We pack up and take off towards Brownsville, TX.

The drive is uneventful and we arrive at the Visitors Center for the Rio Grande Valley area and the hostess gives us their list of 30 area RV parks and she explains that every single private RV park in the area is a senior citizen park for 55 and over! She tells us about one that has a liberal children's policy so we try that one and there is availibility, but Joe is uncomfortable here. I think they have room for over 1200 trailers and we do not see one kid here. (The only campground that is family oriented is on South Padre Island and we wanted something more centrally located.) Joe doesn't want to go to the pool that is filled with 'old people' and neither do I since I'm sure some of them do not want a noisy active boy there. The good news is that now we have a great reason to go to South Padre Island beach!!!

We look for seashells at the beach, but it's high tide and no shells, BUT we find a puffer fish washed up on shore and of course want to keep it for Jackie (a private family joke) but it would smell up the RV so just take a picture instead, so JACKIE: THIS PUFFER FISH IS FOR YOU :-)

It's cool and breezy on the beach but Joe doesn't care. He has a wonderful time building a sandcastle and we don't leave til dark.

Jere wants seafood for dinner so we go to Pirates Landing and have lots of food to eat. I'm starting to have second thoughts about not bringing our scale along :-)