During the last weekend that Denisa's Mother will be in South Texas, we discovered that the City of McAllen was hosting a Monarch Festival at Quinta Mazatlan. After 33 winters in this area, she had never been to this festival or visited Quinta Mazatlan. So alrighty then, we obviously have to take her and our friend Barbara to the festival.
We were greeted with lots of color. The orange umbrellas overhead and the rose bougainvillea made for a stunning entry.
Bougainvillea is one of Denisa's favorite plants, and this was a very healthy specimen. Quinta Mazatlan was once a citrus plantation that has grown into a botanical garden that displays native plants for its visitors.
The festival stage was filled with colorful dancers most of the day. Those dancers ranged from carefully choreographed pairs from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus . . .
to not as carefully choreographed little girls in their beautiful Hispanic costumes.
We also went to the cooking class offered that day, where local foods were used in interesting combinations. The chef is demonstrating a grapefruit and mango salad with a fennel and garlic dressing.
Afterwards, we got a generous sample of the dressing and salad for ourselves.
We also went on the guided nature walk, where we found some of the ingredients for that salad. The chef used yucca blooms in the salad, like the ones pictured below. We tasted some on our walk. Who knew that yucca blooms tasted much like lettuce?!
The blog word of the day is "ornithophilous." That is the name of a category of plants pollinated by birds. If you break it into pieces you have ornith (bird) and philous (love). Try working that new word into your conversation when you describe plants like this specimen with colorful tubular blooms just waiting for a hummingbird to visit and move its pollen to other flowers.
Our tour guide was knowledgeable about many of the plants at Quinta Mazatlan. Denisa asked him the scientific name of the common-looking cactus we saw.
He was completely right with his answer "Opuntia Engelmannii". He thought it was interesting that our name was Engelman and we had a long-lost botanist in the family tree.
The displays inside the hacienda included this beautifully simple chrysalis from which the monarch will eventually make its appearance. We see another of God's wonders when we see the detail of that tiny gold band on each chrysalis. It's another wonder that a beautiful butterfly will emerge, and it all starts with that ugly old caterpillar that is blurred on the left side of the picture.
Speaking of ugly caterpillars, we also got a close up of this tobacco horn worm. If you look closely, you can even see that horn on the left. Instead of a beautiful butterfly, he will become a brown winged creature that is the foe of the tobacco farmer.
We had an educational and interesting day at McAllen's third annual Monarch Festival. The grounds were filled with people of all ages that had sprouted wings for the day.
Some of those people with wings even looked a little familiar.
Denisa's sister and brother-in-law--Connie and Joe--made the long trip from Oklahoma, looking for warmth and sunshine. We were glad that the weather cooperated for the first two days of their visit, so we headed to the beach at South Padre Island to soak up some sun.
Padre Island is a narrow strip of land, less than two miles wide at its biggest point. The island runs 113 miles--all the way from the tip of Texas to Corpus Christi. But no road exists to connect the south and north parts of the island. We drove until the road heading north was closed.
The paved roads literally ends in a sand dune. We climbed over the dune on the right for a walk on the beach.
We are far from the groomed beaches in town. Strewn with pieces of kelp and sea weed, this is the most natural litter we've seen on a Padre Island beach.
Another thing littering the beach was a healthy crop of Portuguese man o' war. Those blue tentacles pack a powerful sting if you touch them.
The other animal life on the beach was this group of horses. We found out that as well as driving a car on this stretch of Padre Island, you can also ride a horse here.
We didn't find any unusual shells, but we did find enough run-of-the-mill shells to spell the usual abbreviation for South Padre Island.
Even though it seemed like Denisa was placing her shells far from the water, a rogue wave washed over her project just minutes after the last picture was taken.
Besides going to the beach, we have several other stops every time we visit the island. We always go by the Padre Island visitor center to check out the sand castle. We were here last year when the artist was tearing down the sand sculpture that had been in this space for several years.
The detail of the visitor center sand castle is frozen in time by a coating of glue and water. This pile of sand was sculpted over a year ago and is still looking good!
This section of the sculpture is fashioned after the lighthouse across the bridge that connects the island to Port Isabel.
The visitor's center has a brochure that gives addresses for the "sand sculpture trail." The trail can be followed to find more examples of these temporary pieces of art all over the island. This one was outside the sea turtle rescue center, which welcomes visitors until 3:15. We know this information because we arrived at 3:30. Oops! We'll have to visit it next time.
We never leave the island without some fresh sea food. Even though we have been a fan of Dirty Al's Cafe for years, we decided to try something new this trip. We enjoyed the combo plate at Pier 19, and we all thought their fresh fish was particularly good. Afterwards, we took a walk on the pier that juts into the water.
The pier also offers lots of photo opportunities for tourists like us. Connie snuggled up right beside the pirate on the bench.
The two sisters felt quite small sitting in the adirondack chair out front. Those stylish pirate hats might have also helped to make them feel little.
There's an optical illusion at work in the picture below. The sisters are looking especially small when we added more of the family into the foreground of the picture.
The next necessary stop on a day on Padre Island includes a view of the bay. We can usually find kite surfers using the ever-present wind to glide across the shallow water of the bay. But a car show at the convention center had all the usual bay parking filled. So today's bay stop included a more urban view on the edge of town.
After visiting the beach, the bay, the food, and the visitor center, we had one final stop. We ended the day with dessert at the island's Dairy Queen, hitting all the classic stops necessary for a complete day on South Padre Island.
We are enjoying our winter stay here in the Rio Grande Valley, and it seems that Mission, Texas, also enjoys the economic impact that the winter Texans bring to their city. So every winter the chamber of commerce hosts a festival complete with gifts for their winter guests. We attended with Denisa's Mother, and our ticket included a free lunch. Denisa's Mother is waving in the bottom corner of the picture below, sitting on the porch of the new Mission Event Center eating that free chicken sandwich and chips.
Contrary to the popular belief that there is no such thing as a free lunch, we enjoyed our sandwich. Then we got in line for the free t-shirt. The Mission Chamber of Commerce gave away hundreds of shirts printed with the logo below.
The town of Mission was named after the Catholic mission that was started at the tiny chapel of La Lomita. Originally built in 1889, it was relocated to this site in 1899. We traveled to see the chapel in person, taking a picture from the same angle as the one on our new t-shirts.
And of course we couldn't resist taking a picture of Denisa and her Mother wearing their La Lomita t-shirts standing beside the La Lomita Chapel.
The inside of the adobe structure is in need of some TLC, but this little chapel was designated as a national historic place in 1975. The candles lit on the altar are evidence that this place is sacred to the people of Mission.
A beautiful blooming bougainvillea plant outside made for the artsy picture of the day with the blurred cross in the background.
Because we are so close to the Rio Grande River, there is a local rumor that a border wall on that raised levee (just north in the picture below) will destroy this little piece of history. On our sight-seeing tour today, we saw protesters at the nearby International Butterfly Center voicing their opinion about the proposed wall.
Because we were so close, we had to make a stop at the Riverside Cafe. That's the Rio Grande behind us, as we stood for a group portrait on our sight-seeing trip with our visitor's--Denisa's sister and brother-in-law.
We also made the trip to Harlingen, Texas, to show our guests the famous statue from World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima. The original is on display at the National Cemetery in Washington DC. Mark is standing at the base to give this magnificent statue some scale of size.
The military academy in Harlingen, Texas, managed to get the plaster casting that the bronze statue in our nation's capitol was modeled after. That's because the lead soldier planting the flag on that pile of rocks on that island battle ground was from the Rio Grande Valley.
Harlon Block was twenty years old the day the famous picture was taken as his squadron planted that flag. Later, an artist used that photo to model the sculpture. Private Block would die six days later in a battle, and his remains are buried not far from the famous statue that bears his likeness.
After a couple warm Rio Grande Valley days, we were slammed by the lowest temperatures of the winter. We hate to complain about the cold when our friends up north have endured record-breaking frigid weather and snow. But highs in the 40's are certainly unusual here in South Texas. So when we took our guests to the local Pulga (that's Spanish for flea market), only a small percentage of the vendors braved the cold to set up.
This cold weather is a good time to dance up a sweat inside at a line dance marathon. Denisa was on the floor for every dance during the three-hour event.
Marathons are supposed to be grueling, but this was three hours of fun for Denisa. The group solicited donations before and during the marathon, and we were able to donate over $2,400 to the Cinderella Pet Rescue a couple miles down the road.
The other direction down our road, we can visit the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. We have free entry with our Texas state park pass, and we invited our friends Joel and Michelle to join us for a bike ride there. We rode our bikes to the park, and then on all the paved roads inside. We even did a little hiking, including this climb to the Hawk Tower overlooking much of the park. We have climbed this tower many times in year's past, and we are happy to say that this is the first time that we actually saw hawks from the Hawk Tower.
We've been enjoying seeing the sights around the Rio Grande Valley with friends and family!
We have told many friends and relatives about the great time we are having in the Rio Grande Valley this winter. Occasionally someone will take us up on our invitation to experience it for themselves. So we were really happy when our nephew and niece and their family joined us for a weekend in the valley.
It stretches our motor home to host two extra guests, so we really didn't have the space for six extras. So they stayed at the Embassy Suites a few miles down the road, and we met them there. That's where we found that you shouldn't tell adventurous explorers that we'd take a picture if they climbed onto the horse statues in the fountain.
We also found an interesting vehicle parked not too far away. We could see the comfy captain's chairs through the big windows, but we will always wonder what it looks like inside the back section of the weiner-mobile.
We love to play games with this family! We played cards in the evening, but we also introduced them to some senior games in our campground. They had never experienced the riveting games of pickle ball and shuffle board before.
We were careful to follow the rule posted, "Don't walk on the Court." So baby Cooper didn't walk--he crawled on the court.
It adds a whole new dimension to the game to shoot the pucks around a moving baby.
We had told them that we live among the citrus trees. As we drove past the juicing company, we saw a trailer full of grape fruit in the parking area. We have often seen more than a dozen trailers filled with citrus parked here, waiting their turn to be escorted into the juicing plant.
We got to show our guests how that fruit grows here in the valley. Camden is a tree-climber, so he loved climbing this grape fruit tree to pick a few.
Yes, that's Camden again, this time climbing the tangerine tree in Denisa's Mother's back yard. We love having tree-ripened fresh citrus every day!
Besides playing in a senior-citizen resort, we also found a junior-citizen play ground. It's fun to hang out with kids!
We are camped about five miles from the Mexico border, and our guests wanted to see another country. So we drove a few miles to the Riverside Cafe to take a look across the river to Mexico.
Our little tree-climber thought it didn't count to just look at the Rio Grande River. He wanted to dip his toe into this international water.
We were enjoying the beautiful weather and the lovely sunset on the last evening of their visit when this picture was taken. We love to share our little piece of paradise with people we love! Thanks to Brian and Alexia, and their family for making the long trip to come see us!
