Jan 26-28

On Tuesday morning we left Mission TX, after a quiet yet enjoyable week. It was before 9 am and we headed out in our shorts and T-shirts for a short 85 mile drive south to the Gulf of Mexico and South Padre Island. Mission is at the north end of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) and as you head south you pass through McAllen, Pharr, Mercedes, La Feria and Harligen. It’s a metropolitan area spanning about 40 miles with 750,000 people. In Texas, the word “snowbird” is not heard often as they prefer to call the northerners’ coming down for winter as “Winter Texans”! That term alone accentuates that they are more appreciative than other southern states. They really understand the economic value that is brought in each year for 5-6 months and truly appreciate it. So, we are in the middle of our stay in Texas as “Winter Texans”.

South Padre Island (SPI) is a strip of land off the mainland with a long stretch of white sandy beach (34 miles long). Due to its beach component it is built around tourism. The main town Padre is about 4-5 miles long and a mile or less in width. We arrived early as you cannot reserve a site in Isla Blanca County Park unless you are staying for a week or longer. We were only staying two nights. With 600 sites, we were where told earlier in the week that they were only about 80% occupied. We got site 129 close to the beach and the bay.

After setting up, it was near lunch so we took a quick walk over to the beach and as we crossed the parking area, low and behold we met up with Oscar – a 4 year old Double Yellow Amazon parrot. (see pic) An older couple from Minnesota had brought him out for the day to get some sunshine and socialize. We spoke with them and Oscar for 15 minutes and learned a bit about SPI since they have been coming here for 22 years. As we were looking for food, they suggested Dirty Al’s for the best shrimp on the island. They also told us about the free shuttle bus that runs up and down the main strip in town. Both pieces of information proved useful!

As we were hungry at that point, Dirty Al’s was just outside the park and yes the fried shrimp basket and secretly spiced fries were excellent. Hmm,hmm… After lunch we walked out of the restaurant and spotted the free shuttle. SO, we jumped on it and headed to town and took a ¾ loop and then got off for a cold beer at Wanna wanna beach bar (see pic)

Afterwards, we walked along the Gulf Blvd looking at all the condominiums, thinking this may be a future option to escape winter for a couple of months.

We picked up the shuttle later in the afternoon and headed back to camp to enjoy the warm weather and the sunset. (See pic)

Wednesday morning we woke to a very heavy fog of think sea air. Everything was dripping salty water but was soon gone when the sun finally came out in full force. Today’s plan was to bike into town in the morning and go up Laguna Blvd. The Island has 3 main Blvds. – Laguna, Padre and Gulf – pretty self explanatory! After returning we had a quick lunch and headed off to the beach for afternoon. Temps were mid – high 70’s, lots of sun and a slight breeze. Back to the rig late afternoon to watch the sunset and BBQ pork tenderloin!

No complaints from the perch this week! Yes, Jazz had fun too. Check out her pic’s of the new friends she made.

Enjoy your weekend!

Squawk later

 

 

January 20-27/15

We arrived at Seven Oaks RV Resort in Mission Texas last Tuesday. It is a 55 Plus park so Rob had to sneak me in since I haven’t reached that age yet!! lol

As soon as we arrived, we were warmly greeted by many of the Winter Texans who spend their winters here. In fact everyone here has been so friendly and welcoming . We wonder if many of them just like talking to us as we likely remind them of their own kids as we are probably closer in age to their kids then we are to the people in this park.  (that’s maybe a bit of a stretch but not too far off)

One of my goals while in Texas was to learn how to Line Dance. This park offers Line Dancing lessons on Wednesday and Friday mornings so both days Rob and I went to the class and learned how to dance. The first day Rob was the talk of the park as he was the only man in a class full of at least 30 women. The Teacher was very kind to us the first class as she went over the dances several times and didn’t teach anything too complicated to learn. The second class didn’t go quite as smoothly though as we were taught harder dances and had a lot less practice time before dancing to music. When you have to learn 5-6 different dances in 1 hour it is difficult. Rob felt a little more comfortable during the second lesson though as one other brave man joined the class that day. (See pics of our lesson)

This park has many social events on it’s weekly calendar. On Saturday night we attended one of them which was ” Italian night “. It was a 5 course Italian dinner put on by some of the park residents. They had been cooking for several days leading up to the dinner. Once again, we felt very welcome. We were invited to sit with a group of people from Wyoming and we had a delicious dinner and good company.

The weather this week has not been quite as hot as we had hoped it would be. When we arrived last Tuesday, it was in the mid 80’s so we thought that was great. The warm temps lasted 2 more days after that but then cold weather  and very high winds blew in for the next 2 days. The wind was blowing so hard, our rig was rocking back and forth like a boat on water. Yesterday we had temps in the low 70’s and today is promising to be in the mid to high 70’s so it will be a pool day today!

Tomorrow we are leaving Mission and heading to South Padre Island which is about 60 miles away. We plan to spend 2 nights on the Island which we are really looking forward to as we have heard great things about the location.

We’ll be back on the perch with more droppings towards the end of the week so stay tuned.

January 20, 2015

Arrived in Mission Texas mid afternoon today to hot weather in the 80’s. We may be off the blog waves for a couple of days as we spread our wings and enjoy the fine temperatures. It has taken almost 4 months and getting to the south tip of Texas (near Brownsville) to find the tropical weather!

We are SQUAWKIN>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Jan 16-19

San Antonio, Texas  (7,080 miles/11,328 kms.)

Friday morning was a short drive of about 75 miles from our previous night’s park(aka-Walmart). We had a relaxed start with a breakfast of sausage and eggs and arrived at Traveller’s World RV Resort about 3 miles south of downtown San Antonio about 12:30 pm. After setting up and having lunch we hopped on the bus around 3:30pm heading downtown for the night.

History lesson #1 – San Antonio was founded around a group of missions (5) started in the early 1700’s with 4 of them still active churches holding catholic mass. Spaniards from New Spain (Mexico) travelled here to set up and colonize in their Spanish tradition. At the time the Native Indians roamed the area and they brought them into these missions to convert them to Catholicism. They would be fully converted from their traditional customs, languages, food, dances and beliefs. They were taught Spanish for talking and Latin for worship. I guess as a pun, this was their “mission”!! These missions were for the most part self contained with nearby fruit orchards, ranches for raising livestock, etc..

Where we are parked, it is in the heart of the mission district which is basically an 8 mile park along the San Antonio river. The first mission was the Alamo (Mission San Antonio de Valero) in the downtown core, followed by Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan and Espada. We are 1 mile south of Concepcion and about 1 mile north of San Jose. The city has miles of bike and walking trails and we are right next door to the river trail system linking all this up. They have done a fantastic job in this respect.

Ok, back to Friday afternoon….after a 25 minute bus ride we are in the heart of downtown and immediately embarked on the river walk, one of the big attractions in San Antonio. History lesson #2 – The “river walk” stems from a solution to solve a problem back in the early 1900’s. With the river flowing right through the downtown core, erosion and flooding were a constant problem, so an architect at the time decided that a good solution would be to cement over the miles of aquifers and also develop hotels, restaurants, offices along the route. The cementing wasn’t finally approved until the 1940’s but further development didn’t really take off until the 60’s.Now it is a thriving tourist districts with markets, restaurants, hotels, clubs, etc.. stretching 8 miles. Many of the 8 miles are purely nice walking trails along the river. The interesting part is that all of this (except the high rise hotels) is 20 feet below the city streets.

On our initial walk, we found the San Fernando Cathedral in the Main Plaza. It was the first church that the city of San Antonio started building around. We arrived back at the RV around 8:30 that night.

Saturday, we decided to get the bikes out and tour along the paved (cement) trails along the river heading south to Mission-San Jose – called the “Queen of Missions”. (see pic)  Finally some tourist attractions that where free! All the missions are free. After seeing a short film and touring San Jose, we headed further south to San Juan. Much smaller in all respects, but interesting to see just the same. We had left around mid morning, so it was time to get back to Jazz as it was around 2 o’clock now for some lunch and some sun at the pool. We also had lots more to see in the area, so a bit of brochure reading and planning for Sunday was in order.

Sunday, our first plan was to visit the historic King William District. This was about 4 miles towards downtown on the riverside bike trails. We headed off around 9:30 and within less than a mile discovered that the bike/walk trail had been commandeered that morning for a ½ marathon. The alternate for us was the Mission Trail Parkway, which also landed us on some less than desirable biking roads for short distances. We eventually found the hub of the historic area and obtained some street walking tour maps. History Lesson #3 – King William District…. It is an area established around the turn of the 1900 century, primary by wealthy German immigrants. There are many grandeur homes in the area – see pics, but also a considerable sprinkling of so called cottages – which were much smaller and also more eclectic. In this area we also found and toured the Guenther House and grounds. This family founded and still own and operate the Pioneer/White Wing flours mills beside the house and elsewhere in Texas.

After touring the area for a couple of hours, we retreated back home, now able to use the river bike trail – 4 miles back. The cement trail is marked every 1/10 of a mile. We fried up some hot dogs and onions for lunch and took Jazz for a quick walk to the park. By 2:30 we were back on the bus to finish our “tourists” plans for San Antonio. First off, back in downtown, walk to see the Spanish Governor’s Palace. From the outside, it was a one storey adobe that wasn’t impressive, so we kept the $5 admission charge and headed to the Alamo. History lesson #4 – The battle at the Alamo goes to the root of Texan history – in short they lost the battle as they only had around 200 men to fight against an army of 2,000 Spaniards from New Spain (Mexico). It was a 13 day siege. A few weeks later a much large military was able to defeat the Mexican army, and Texas finally gained its independence. The battle at Alamo was in the spring of 1836. There are lots of history books on it if you want more details. The church (now a shrine) (see pic) and the stockades are all that remains from the original site.

Lastly, before finding a place for libations and dinner, we walked to La Villita – the city’s first artisan district dating back to the 1930’s. Once again, many stores were either not open or vacant. It was a nice looking area, just off the river walk, but sadly no one was there. It was late Sunday afternoon, so maybe that’s why. We went out for a steak dinner (after all we’re in Texas) and were back home to relieve Jazz by 8 pm.

Monday, was a morning to do some research and planning for the next few weeks as we head to south Texas tomorrow morning. Sunning at the pool was in order for the afternoon.

Talk to you soon from the Gulf of Mexico!

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 12-16, 2015

We arrived at Queen Mine RV Park in Bisbee Arizona before noon on Monday. Bisbee is approximately 10 miles away from the Mexican Border.

We had originally planned to leave Tombstone and arrive in Bisbee on Sunday, January 11^th however as we were getting ready to leave we discovered that we had a flat tire on the RV. Time to try out our CAA RV road assistance coverage. Within an hour we had an AAA service tech at our campsite. As the tires on our RV had not been touched since new, it proved to be somewhat of a challenge to remove the lug nuts on the chrome ring on the tire due to rust etc. Finally, the tire was removed, the spare put on and all was well again. By this time though it was close to 3 pm so we decided just to spend another night there and headed to Bisbee the next morning.

Here is a little history of Bisbee: In 1887, a reconnaissance detail of army scouts and calvarymen were sent to the Mule Mountains in search of renegade Apaches. What Lt John Rucker and a civilian tracker Jack Dunn found instead were signs of copper. The first mining claim was staked in what would later become the City of Bisbee. This claim along with a multitude of others sent mining prospectors scurrying to Mule Mountains in hopes of striking it rich. The city was named in honour of Judge DeWitt Bisbee from San Francisco who was a major financial backer of the mine. During this time miners from England brought their 2000 year mining experience to Bisbee. They also brought legends of little people known as “Tommy Knockers” who were said to warn miners of danger by knocking on rocks.

Bisbee was a rough and tumble mining camp and in Bisbee’s famed red-light district, Brewery Gulch boasted nearly 50 saloons and almost as many brothels. It was once considered the wildest street in North America. (See pic) Bisbee’s mines closed in the 70’s but Bisbee has entertained millions of visitors since. It is a National Registered Historic District that chronicles the Old West.

Today, it has transformed itself into a quirky, artsy town offering historic lodging, fine dining, museums, art galleries and antique shops.

Naturally, the first thing we did upon arriving in Bisbee was go for a tour of the Queen Mine which was only a couple of hundred feet away from our RV Camp thus it was very convenient. (see pic) We took an original mining train into the mine until we were 1500 feet inside. We had to wear Hard Hats, miners coats and miners lights. There is 143 miles of tunnels in the Queen Mine alone and over 2000 miles of tunnels in all of the mines in Bisbee. The miners life was very hard. At the start of their shift they were each issued 4 candles which was their only light source originally. Miners were paid anywhere up to 36 cents per hour depending on their job and they were able to double their wages if they were more productive by exceeding their daily quota. Originally, the miners had to push 1 ton carts of Ore out of the mine to be sent on to nearby town of Douglas for processing. Eventually, they used Mules to haul the ore out of the mines and mules could pull 4 carts as opposed to only one that people could push thus significantly increasing productivity.

Bisbee’s mines produced more than 8 billion pounds of copper as well as gold, silver and zinc. It was one of the most productive mining districts in the world from the late 1800’s until it’s closure in 1975.

After the mine tour, we took Jazz for a walk around town and checked out the funky streets, shops, etc. The whole town is built on the mountains so the streets are up and down all over the place. There are many sets of staircases all over the town to allow access to the higher streets.

The following morning we learned from the RV Park Manager that at 11:30 pm the night before, there had been 2 EMS vehicles in the park attending to a park resident who had been cleaning his gun while in his little Bolar type trailer and his gun fired as he was doing so. He shot himself in the hand and the bullet continued on through the wall of his trailer and entered through the wall of the RV beside him. The bullet went right through the bedroom of that RV and out the other side. Fortunately the occupants of that RV were already in bed so the bullet missed them and just damaged the 2 walls of their RV. These 2 RV’s were just across the small RV park from where we were parked – about 200 feet away.  Too close for comfort!!

That morning we walked through town without Jazz and were able to go into the many artsy type shops and we of course had to check out a couple of the saloons in town as well. On Brewery Gulch, was a saloon called the Brewery Saloon. In 1914 due to prohibition, this saloon was forced to close its doors. A Brokerage and Investment firm moved into the vacated premises of the saloon. This firm joined the New York Stock Exchange and had a board installed and a ticker tape sent from Manhatten. The original board is still in the building and is the only board ever used and affiliated with the NYSE in Arizona. In the late 80’s the Stock Exchange Saloon opened in the premises. (See pics) and we enjoyed a pint in the 100 plus year old surroundings. As it turned out, we could have brought Jazz with us as this saloon was dog friendly.

We left Bisbee in the morning of January 14^th and spent the next 2 days driving between 350 and 400 miles each day on our way to our next destination, San Antonio Texas where we will spend 4 days. To get there we drove through New Mexico in which we encountered very cold temperatures and actual snow flurries as we drove. We got out of there as fast as we could but the cold temps stayed with us into Texas.

Yesterday when we woke up in the parking lot of a Flying J Truck stop in Van Horn Texas, it was 27 degrees F, outside. This is the coldest temps we have encountered on our entire trip. This morning (Jan 16^th) it was 31 degrees F when we woke up in the Walmart parking lot in Kerrville Texas. (70 miles northwest of San Antonio)  Brrrrrr!!!

Off we go searching for warm climates in southern Texas. Have a great weekend everyone and we will squawk to you next week and let you know about our adventures in San Antonio.