Big Bend to South Padre Island

Whenever Les gets a little bit bored, he just drags out a different toy to play with.

What's so great about this is that it's a wonderful conversation starter with the neighbors.







This is the Bromeilliad that Sterling brought to me when he came out on our first week, down in Ocotillo Wells. It's been blooming ever since. The blooms alternate on each side and last about a day. Isn't this a beauty.



You can click on any picture to see it larger!



We had a good day riding through the Davis Mountains. You have to understand, that most everything is 'big' in Texas, but they ain't seen the Sierra's! At home, we'd call these the foothills.... We rode up to the McDonald's Observatory for the view.










We really got a chuckle at Big Bend National Park. As y'all know (that's Texas talk), the Rio Grande is the boundary line between the US and Mexico. If you look closely at this photo, you'll see the rafting tubes on the Mexico side of the border... Is that so they don't have to swim?

A nice lady offered to take our photo. That's Mexico in the background.

In Del Rio is Lake Amistad. This apparently was the original road. Just something that made me chuckle.

And a picture of me at my first attempt at Chili Relleno's. Must say, they were a ton of work, but, oh my, were they good. Notice the fashion gloves.

South Padre Island suprised us. I don't know what we were expecting, but it wasn't this big resort area. We've been told that we're here during off season and that it's crazy at Spring Break.
We weren't able to stay on the Island (everything is wait-listed), so we're based in Mercedes, Texas, for a few days and site-seeing from here.

Today we walked across the border and had lunch in Progreso. It's a typical border town and since we don't have our dental work done there, or buy our prescriptions or get our hair/nails done, we just went over and had lunch. It was a fun afternoon. A funny side note, there are turnstiles as you go in and it costs .25 to get in to Mexico and then it costs .30 to get out. (Cars cost $2 to get in and $1.60, we think, to drive out. Also, when you leave you have to pay Texas taxes on your alcohol and cigarettes. The tax on a carton of smokes was $15)

We'll be heading up to Corpus Christi this weekend.