Sunday

Hello friends and family,
I leave Donna, Tx on Sunday morning. Many are leaving the park now and two more left this morning. There are many hugs and tears as friendships have been formed and saying good-bye is always difficult.

I plan to go north to Victoria, Tx and spend the night at WalMart. It will seem really strange to be on the road again. The activity directors for the park, Wes and Jude, invited me to spend some time with them at the lake in northern Texas and there is nothing I would like better, so will aim for that.

The photo is a dancer in Progreso, Mexico. They put on quite a show! I will definitely miss going there. Cactus Jack and I had a great time going from lounge to lounge and dancing the evenings away. After the great Mexican music I have a hard time with the country sounds you hear at the dances in the valley.

I will attempt to keep up my blog as computer signal access allows. I am getting a bit homesick for Canada, but definitely too cold there to be heading home. Who knows what adventure is around the corner!

Wish me luck on the road y'all.

Monterrey/Saltillo, Mexio

Greetings my friends:

We just returned from 3 days and 2 nights in Monterrey/Saltillo, Mexico. It was a wonderful experience. We had only been to Mexican border towns, never to a Mexican city. We were very surprised at how modern and beautiful the cities are. The old 17 century buildings are mixed in with the new modern architecture. The new buildings are a work of art in themselves. The main streets are at least 3 lanes in each direction and well paved and demarcated. It was a good time to travel as the trees are in bloom as well as the cactuses.

The first day out was extremely hot. Our tour guide, Abel, said it had reached 110F. The next day was perfect and the third day had a somewhat chilly wind blowing, but was still nice. We visited new structures as well as the old city. Our bus driver, JoseLuis, was extremely proficient at turning down narrow, narrow streets with parking on both sides. A couple of times we all gave him applause for making, what looked to us, an impossible turn.

The first photo is a close-up of the cathedral in Saltillo. The detail is incredible. Everywhere are monuments; statues of some Mexican general, president, hero, etc. The parks are well treed, beautifully tended and flowered. The second photo is of the governor's palace in the heart of Monterrey. It is on a huge plaza with many statues and a park.

We also went to Horse Tail Falls, which is high in the mountains and surrounded with a beautiful park where families can picnic and enjoy the scenery. We stayed at a very nice hotel in Monterrey, walking distance to shopping and night life.

Things were more expensive in the cities than in the border towns. There are many huge factories there, which employ the Mexicans. We were told that most factory workers make $1/hr. but are striving to have that increased to $2/hr. For such low wages, a huge percentage of the vehicles were new. We saw rows and rows of the pigeon, chicken and turkey houses that my guide on the border trip had explained. Our guide explained many things to us, from important dates in Mexican history to how squatters eventually own their property. He had two years of post-secondary education to become a tour guide over 30 years ago. Now, he said, you need 4 years of post-secondary to become a tour guide. He had a great sense of humour and told us several jokes, which were very funny with his accent.

All in all it was indeed a trip to remember!

La Gloria, Texas

Hola amigos,

We've been extremely busy as of late. On Saturday the owners of my RV park hosted a barbeque as an appreciation day. There were two different entertainers...one before the meal and one after. In the evening we went to La Escondidas, as we had been invited to a birthday party there.

This afternoon we went to see bloodless bullfights in La Gloria. There were 3 matadores and 1 matadora. Lupita Lopez is one of the world's 5 female matadoras. She was grace personified. After each of the matadores performed the judges would ask the audience to wave their hats or hankies to relay whether the matador should get the prize of one bull ear, two ears, or two bull ears and a tail (all fake). Lupita won the top prize. The custumes were gorgeous, and there were a few near misses.

Ending the performance was a Mexican performer on his dancing horse. He called himself El Guapo (Handsome). He sang while riding and had his horse do tricks.

It was an event worth seeing.

Spring is here

Greetings Y'all,
Cactus Jack has arrived in South Texas and you see him here looking "cool" and having a drink by the ocean on South Padre Island. We went to Boomerang Billies to see Leslie perform. We scooted out of there leaving enough time to get ready for the evening's dance at an RV park in Weslaco. Today we went to Pepe's on the River and danced again, so tonight we are both tired. Pepe's was absolutely packed!

Spring has arrived and today I saw many shrubs in full bloom and they were gorgeous. We had a bit of rain today which is great as it has been very dusty here as of late.

We will be very busy as I would like Jack to see the many sites of Southern Texas and parts of Mexico.

Hope you are all well and happy.

Dancers

Hola,

Another day in Progreso to finish the dental work. Finally finished!!!! Our friend, Carol, took Gab and I to a restaurant/gift store called Garcia's and also called the Canada Store. It cost us each $5.50 to enter. For that price you got unlimited pina coladas, margaritas or tequila sunrise. They had a live band and dancing for part of the time. For the second part a company of dancers performed for us. They were fantastic! The male's dancing reminded me a lot of the riverdance. It began at four and was over by 6 pm.

It is extremely windy this evening so hope we don't blow away!

Gabrielle

Buenos dias mis amigos,

These are photos of Gab in Mexico. She was surprised at the size of the pinatas, so I had to take her pic with one. There are many stores in Mexico and here in the valley that are party stores and sell a variety of pinatas and huge bags of candy to fill them with. Mexicans like to celebrate whenever possible, whether it is a birthday, anniversary or whatever.

We went into a cantina for a margarita and there was a man all dressed and painted in silver. He would walk around acting like a robot and you could have your picture taken with him for a dollar. Anyway to make a buck!

We were there most of the day and you do get weary of the hawkers trying to sell you their wares. You cannot walk down the street without each and every merchant trying to get your attention. Add to that the dentists, hairdressers, etc and it is non-stop. But, it was an experience for her and she was able to find some gifts for friends back home.

On Sunday we plan to go to South Padre Island for the day. Today is a rest day!

Aloe Farm

Greetings all,

Yesterday Gabrielle and I went with our park to Mercedes, Tx to the Aloe King Farm. It was extremely interesting. The top photo is an aloe vera field. They have about 40 acres planted in aloe. When the outer leaves get big they cut them off and sell them by the leaf....a dollar a leaf. Our guide showed us how to fillet an aloe leaf so as to just have the slippery white stuff inside the leaf. Some of the leaves are filleted and sent to factories to be made into aloe vera products, such as cosmetics and lotions. The aloe plants have suckers and these are cut and sent out as young plants. They sent 70,000 of these young plants to Uganda. Aloe plants are extremely hardy except when it comes to cold. Temperatures just above freezing will kill the plants. No pest will attack the aloe plant. They do have blossoms, but no one knows why. The blossoms do not go to seed, so they seem to serve no purpose.

They also grow citrus fruits, papaya and avocado on this farm, mostly for their own use.

J.R. Sigrist and his wife own the farm. She is 86 and he is 87 years old. He is also known as "The Sandman" as he does sand art. They collect different colored sand from all over the world. He was explaining that there is no blue sand, but there is sand of all the other colours. Green sand is becoming difficult to find. We watched as he made a bottle of his sand art. He packs the sand so tightly that even if you roll the bottle the artwork stays intact. He then seals each bottle with wax before putting on the lid. It was something to watch!

His wife runs the gift store and does a presentation on the history of the farm. She was a pure delight!

It was a great day.