Wednesday AM

I awakened early this morning (4:30).  I don't know why, so I thought I could update the blog while the lovely one sleeps.

We are supposed to meet the St. Louis Airstreamers for lunch today at the Sunshine Café in Weslaco, TX.  There are at least five couples here in the valley.

Monday was a day to go to Harlingen to shop for a few items.  We had lunch at a BBQ restaurant called Big John's

Yesterday, Tuesday, was a busy day.  We went to Mission, TX to a pontoon boat tour of the Rio Grande River.

This is the tour we had cancelled when we had sub freezing temperatures two weeks ago. We rode with our friends, Jim and Gloria from WV.

 It was interesting and we learned a lot about how the river is used here and in Mexico to irrigate farmland.  Water is pumped into canals and then sold by the acre to the farms.  There is no sprinkling system.  The fields are flooded to water them.

The river is dammed at several places, but there are no locks as there is no commercial traffic on the river.

Anzalduas Dam

pumping station

Teddy wanted me to be sure to get a picture of the gunboats used by Homeland Security and the Border Patrol.

 

There was a lot of conversation about how easy it is to cross the narrow river, and get to the highway for transportation north.

There was a RV park on the river at Chimney park.  Chimney park is an area that was a pumping station in the 50's, but is now a recreation area.

 There is a Border Patrol Station at the Chimney park, and we also saw their boats along the river.

Lookout tower

Patrol Boat

 

There is a lot of construction on the Mexico side.  They build their buildings out of concrete, even the roof.

We were served lunch as part of the tour.  Lela and I had shrimp, but the people who knew the tour had the tenderloin.  If we were to do this tour again, we will have the tenderloin. It was huge!

The Riverside club, where the tour was, also has entertainment.  I thought this poster would be of interest to our friend, Becky.

 
There were a lot of signs of the destruction from the 2010 hurricane that hit Mexico, due to a storm surge and rain.  Much like we saw in the flood of '93 at home, there were still high water marks on the building which were not repaired.

Pepe's Restaurant

 When we returned, we drove down to Brownsville to the Commemorative Air Force Museum.

When we arrived, it was closed.  However, there was a man there who let us in and gave us the tour anyway.  They are preparing for an airshow this weekend so things were "in preparation."  We did get to see the video of the history of the CAF, and we got to look at all the memorabilia.