It is true, we finally found the warm weather! We are in Brownsville Texas. We are about as far south as you can go in Texas. Last night the furnace did not run even once. The temperature was near 80 yesterday, and 59 this morning. We are staying in a modest sized RV park on the outskirts of Brownsville. They provide lots of activities here, and many people stay the winter here. We will not be staying, but we did settle in for a four day stay. As soon as the holidays are over, this park is booked solid until the end of March. I suspect we will feel a bit like salmon swimming upstream when we start working our way north and west toward New Mexico. The snow birds will be migrating in mass, and this is definitely one of the destinations of choice.

Here is a sample of what is on tap for the residents of Paul’s RV Park. The day starts off at 8:00 am with group exercises for anyone who is interested. On different days there is line dancing lessons, chair dancing lessons, water aerobics in the swimming pool, Spanish lessons, quilting, bingo, art lessons, (both Pointillism and Water Colors,) breakfasts, bowling and golf expeditions and group trips to the beach or Mexico. Special activities today include a Christmas Eve gift exchange and for tomorrow a huge Christmas dinner pot luck. We have linked up with recent friends from Ontario, Glenn and Deb McGill. Glenn is also a Ham and helped me get linked up with EchoLink, an internet based Ham network. If any of our friends are “closet amateurs,” and want to find out more, get back to me by e-mail.

This park itself is a little old, and therefore is built for smaller rigs. We had to drop the trailer on an empty site next door to fit into our site. It worked out fine right now, but would be a problem if we were planning on staying,

We have been doing lots of bicycle riding. Yesterday we toured the city of Brownsville. It is smashed up against the Rio Grande with the corresponding Mexican town of Matamoros just across the river. Wal-Mart was a zoo yesterday. Path and I lounged outside while Judy did some last minute Christmas shopping for today’s gift exchange. I observed the cars parading past my location were either beat-up old wrecks or brand new. There did not seem to be much in between. Big SUV’s and Chevy Silvarado’s dominated the new stuff. The older and more predominate fraction were small cars and light weight pickups. A fair percentage of these carried Mexican license plates. Many of our people go to Mexico to get things cheap: Especially medicines, dental and vision work. Yet there is at least some goods that attract Mexicans to our stores.

While we are in this corner of the world, we have been able to spot many new-to-us bird species. On the beach we were surrounded by shore birds; there are Sandpipers, Plovers, Willits, Dowitchers and Curlews. There are also lots of pelicans, ring billed gulls and Caspian Terns in this area too. Off the beach we got a picture of a Great Blue Herron and a Mexican Eagle. We have heard there are flocks of red crowned parrots in the area, but we have yet to spot any.

You can see that we are still finding lots of fun stuff to do and new places to go. Even though the people are super friendly here, we still get the urge to move on after a couple days, so don’t expect us to settle down anytime soon.

We wish you a Merry Christmas to all from deep in the heart of Texas.

With love from Gary and Judy Dinsmore.