March 21, 2018 We finally took a trip to Mexico and by chance were there for its Tourist Day. The trip itself is easy. Most people park on the U.S. side and walk across a bridge (50¢ cross into Mexico; 25¢ to return) with a shaded pedestrian path. No documentation Read more
March 17, 2018 Richard King was a former steamboat captain who began purchasing land for a ranch in southern Texas in 1853. King Ranch is now over 825,000 acres and has had holdings in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Florida, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Australia, Venezuela, Spain, and Morocco. King died in 1885, Read more
March 11, 2018 This park is surrounded by the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a favorite spot for boating and fishing.
March 8, 2018 Boca Chica is part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. We drove on Boca Chica Boulevard about 11 miles east of Brownsville, by the Palmito Ranch area, through the village of Boca Chica which will be home to a SpaceX launch facility, and then Read more
March 8, 2018 On May 12, 1865, a month after Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Union forces advanced on Confederates near Palmito Ranch (near present-day Brownsville), ostensibly to secure much-needed supplies for the Union troops. Skirmishes took place over two days and are considered Read more
March 3, 2018 McAllen Heritage Center was the perfect place for spending the couple of hours between a geocaching event at the nature center and a hawk lecture at the birding center. We knew this would be a small museum when the prehistoric mammoth was paper and the mammoth tooth Read more
February 17, 2018 Laguna Atascosa is the largest protected area of natural habitat left in the Rio Grande Valley. Our tram tour took us by the Laguna Madre (the 130 mile lagoon separating mainland Texas from South Padre Island), and through coastal prairie and thorn scrub. Yucca plants were in Read more
February 16, 2018 The battle at Palo Alto on May 8, 1846 began the war with Mexico that established the Rio Grande as the U.S.-Mexican boundary. Although Texas had severed ties with Mexico in 1836, many Mexican leaders refused to recognize this. Texas was admitted to the U.S. as its Read more
February 16, 2018 The earliest graves in this cemetery date to the 1850’s. We appreciated that signs containing a few sentences of biographical information were provided for decedents who played notable roles in the history of the area. The white pelicans in the video below seemed to be practicing their Read more
February 16, 2018 This museum is housed in a beautiful 1920’s era train depot. Our favorite exhibit was a wood-burning locomotive built in 1877. It took two hours to cross the 23 miles from Brownsville to Port Isabel. The train would back up to the dock and steamship passengers would Read more