South Texas Revisited

Every once in a while, my friend, Larry, reminds me that I need to post something on my blog.  He just did that again so I suppose I should write something.

Louise and I came to South Texas again this year.  We arrived here on January 6 and will be here till March 6.  The weather was absolutely atrocious the first week we were here, making us wonder whether we had made a good choice.  It has since corrected itself, however, and has been beautiful for weeks.

There are too many things to do here to get them all done - many of the activities center around eating.  No wonder I can't lose any weight!  For example, we had the Oklahoma luncheon the other day.  Everyone in the Valley who is from Oklahoma is welcome to attend.  There were about 300 attendees at the luncheon and it was a lot of fun to meet and talk to some of them.

The woman seated next to me won the prize for being the oldest attendee.  She will turn 101 in June and lives in Bearden, Oklahoma, near where my mother grew up.  In the course of the conversation, I found out that she knew my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and my mother quite well.  As the old saying goes, it's a small World!

Another man seated at our table heard us say that we were from Mannford and asked if we had, by chance, known a fellow by the name of Bill Heller.  Of course, I had known Bill and Mary Heller from when I was a kid.  It turns out that he was their ex-  son-in-law.

Speaking of eating, today is half price day on oysters out on South Padre Island.  Guess where we are going this afternoon!  Last week, I ate 2 1/2 dozen of them, I think I can repeat that this week

After we leave here, we are going to go to Louisiana for a few days before returning home.  We have some serious eating to do (crawfish!) over there.  I'll keep you posted on our food adventures.

South Texas

We are getting ready for our annual trek to South Texas, aka "The Valley", aka the Rio Grande Valley. We will stay there as long as it it cold in Oklahoma!

The Valley is an interesting place. It has absolutely no scenery, only mild temperatures. Typically, the temps in the Valley are about 30° warmer than in the Tulsa area. If its 30° here, it will be 60° there, enough reason to travel that way.

Some observations: the place is full of OLD PEOPLE! When you go into a restaurant or bar, everyone in there except the wait staff is over 65. Since old people are notoriously bad tippers, I would hate to have a job like that in South Texas.

In the Valley, you are very close to Mexico, usually 10 miles or less. Louise and I used to make frequent trips across the border to shop and watch the other old people shopping. In the past couple of years, however, we have decided that Mexico might be a bit more hazardous than we like. When you cross the border in Progreso (near Harlingen), the first thing you see is a soldier with a machine gun in an armored personnel carrier. It doesn't give you warm, fuzzy feeling.

You are, however, close to the beach. South Padre Island is only about 30 miles away and we do make several trips to the Island every year to sight see and eat at the restaurants there.

We are going to be staying in our new (to us) motorhome this year. It will be a bit different but should be a lot of fun. We'll let you know in future posts.