Texas March 3RD, 2012

Haven't done much with the blog because most of what we are doing we have done before. Especially Happy Hour 5 days a week. We took a boat trip to the Brownsville ship channel. Once we got there we found out that because of the Home Land Securities we could not take pictures. Mainly what we saw was scrap yards cutting up old ships. One of them was a Navy Hospital ship that was used in Okinawa. At the end of the war it was crammed with troops going home. We did get to see porpoises and stopped at a shrimp boat area. We stopped and they gave us a cooler full of cooked shrimp to eat as we did the cruise.

 

The Port Isabel Light House

 They are always doing dredging in Laguna Madre

                            They built a new Bass Pro Shop in Harlingen. Stopped to see what it was like.

We went to the Iwo Jima monument. This is the original. A casting was made from this one and the duplicate is in Washington DC

The ladies had the yearly luncheon. This year's theme was Hillbilly. The mens' lunch had  a beer theme. It was held at BJ's Brew Pub in McAllen. The Ladies lunch next year will be a roaring 20's theme. The theme for the guy's will be BEER again. Why ruin perfection.

                                   

We went to Rancho El Charco

It was part of the original land grant from the King of Spain. We took a horse drawn wagon on a tour the had a very good lunch. I finally got an answer to a question that I have had for many years. Why is this area called the Rio Grande Valley when there are no mountains any where near by to make this a valley. It turns out that when they were looking to get people to move here they figured that Rio Grande Valley sounded better then the Rio Grande Flood Plain

                                                                        A climbing fox

Saw this sign which we thought was great because one of the guys with us was Gordy.

                          Came across this motor cycle with a trailer attached  that I thought was interesting.

                         I don't know if he had a premonition for his trailer or just a weird sense of humor.