Bentsen Palm State Park and the Butterfly Center

What a place for birds and butterflies.  Both areas are just a few minutes away on a bike.  You can walk out the back gate of our park and you are in the state park.  Ride a mile and you are in the butterfly park.  Amazing.  You can see the same birds and butterflies in our rv park if you are patient.

My personal favorite.

Thanks, John, for the book we can use to identify these guys. Thanks, Margaret, for the binoculars so we can actually see them!

NatGeo photographer???

Alien of a different kind???

Both parks are lovely and inexpensive.  Admission to the state  park is free for Bentsen Palm residents.  The Butterfly Center is a $5 all day admission.  Be sure to wave hi to all the illegal aliens who use this as their border crossing area.

Christmas..the big day is here!

Our park clubhouse was looking pretty nice at night.  Lots of events going on for Christmas eve and Christmas day.  Fur kids were eagerly looking forward to their visit from Santa Dog.  Buster was enjoying spending the holidays with his new friends, Wall E and Bouncer.  Their daily romps at the dog park could not calm them down.  Treats were on the way.

Miss Tooie was keeping eye on the front door for the big guy with all the toys.

Christmas Eve arrived at Bentsen Palm RV Park

All we had to do was hit the hay and let the guy arrive with the toys!

Buster was a good boy, but Miss Tooie was peeking and not sleeping.

This is the only "big guy" that these too little bugs love.

Perhaps someone had a little too much Christmas cheer????

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Texas Christmas

 Merry Christmas to All,


Well, so what... I know I'm a little late, but we've been busy getting ready for all the Texas Christmas celebrations.  We started out the season with an invitation to visit the Retama RV subdivision just to the north of our park.  They really did an awesome job kicking off the season the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Nice clubhouse, pool, etc.

Notice!  First Thanksgiving weekend I've spent in shorts and enjoying the pool.

A series of craft classes had us making some pretty nice Christmas decorations
 for our rv's.

                                                                                                                                   

Of course, wine tasting class was my personal favorite!

 The city of Hildago is famous for it's Christmas lights display.  The entire town is decorated and you can drive through it in your car or take a small trolley ride!

These pictures do not do it justice.  Each town down here had it's own parade and tree lighting festival. 

 Fireworks for Christmas is another popular tradition in south Texas.

Now it was time to roll up our sleeves and do some decorating ourselves.  We  put up some colored lights and hung our Santa flag.  We were feeling pretty proud of our little display.

 Our neighbors had quite a display and it all changed colors too!  Other people had motion sensor music, flashing lights, rope lights up the palm trees, Santa ski lifts, and I could go one.  We didn't have to drive to Hildago to see great lights.  We just looked out our window.  It was fabulous and helped get us through our first Christmas without our family and close friends.

So now all we had to do was sit back and wait for the big day...... or so we thought.

Happy Winter Solstice; put on your Druid clothes!

Happy Winter Solstice! The days start getting longer tomorrow!  

Tonight is the night that the axis, as seen from the north, points as directly away from the sun as it will all year. So Chicago, for instance, will get just 9.1 hours of daylight tomorrow, Atlanta and Los Angeles will get 9.9 hours (they're closer to the equator) and everything north of the Arctic Circle will experience 24 hours of darkness.

We've known all this for a long time, which conveniently brings us back to Stonehenge, which was built between 3000 and 1600 BC. Modern scientists figured out long ago that it was, among other things, an ancient astronomical calendar, and that on the morning of the summer solstice -- usually June 21, when northern days are at their longest -- the sun rises over the famous heelstone at one end.

But they have continued to wonder how the ancient builders of Stonehenge built the great circle, and where they got the rock for it -- none of which is commonly found on Salisbury Plain, west of London.

Now, researchers from Leicester University and National Museum Wales report they've made a match. They say rocks at Craig Rhos-y-felin, an outcropping in south Wales 100 miles away, are 99 percent similar in mineral composition and texture to the rock at Stonehenge -- more similar than any other stone found. The researchers said they were able to match Stonehenge rock to an area just a couple of hundred feet across.

"Being able to provenance any archaeologically significant rock so precisely is remarkable," said Rob Ixer, a Leicester minerologist, in an interview with the BBC.

Tomorrow morning the sun won't rise over Stonehenge until 8:08 a.m. local time, and it will set at 4:02 p.m. But take comfort that the shortest day of the year will now be past

 

                                                             

Mission, TEXAS November

We made it!  and just in time to sign up for the big Thanksgiving dinner event.  We've met some people and everyone seems really nice.  This place is spacious and what it lacks in a fancy clubhouse is made up by the park itself.  Here's our rv on our lot.  We will be on this site until Jan. 1 and then we  move closer to the clubhouse and dog park.  There are  many birds and butterflies.  There is a National Butterfly Center just about a mile from us and Bentsen State Park, part of the Texas Birding Trail, is about 1/8 of a mile down our dead end street. We can walk there, but we usually ride our bikes.

 

Lots of flowering shrubs attract hummingbirds and butterflies.

This is the first warm Thanksgiving I've ever had!  Some days are in the mid 90's

Picnic/craft area in front of our RV.

RV's are parked faced in around a huge circle.  In the centers are picnic areas, pool tables, activities and more.

Have to keep the sun out of the rv or we roast!  

The clubhouse is not air conditioned, but the breeze keeps it nice all day long.

Each street is neat and clean.  Everyone waves when you walk or bike by.

In the center of some of the circles are casitas which you can rent.  They have pretty little courtyards behind them.

We like it so much here that we have already booked another month.  We may stay til it just gets to hot to stand!

These Brahmas are in the field right behind the dog park.

 Some are cuter than others.

King Ranch

 The King Ranch.   Cowboy town....quarter horse quarters and grazing land for lots of cows and rattlesnakes.

Tried to write this with some unique cowboy font, but couldn't find one.  Will have settle for this cow.... brown stuff.  Once you leave Corpus Christi...goodbye civilization.  While this part of Texas is a little more populated, it's still a LONG way to the next McDonalds.

Would have loved to saddle up and ride out to see the place, but they kept us locked up on a tour bus.

We saw Santa Gertrudis cows and quarter horses, dry grass and only one or two people.

T

Nice little ranch house, but the bus can't slow down or stop by it even though no one is in it.

This guy is 83 and was one of the first people to ride the triple crown winner, Assault.  Look it up.  The King Ranch raised and trained thoroughbreds for a short period of time.   

We had a great time but we still had to make it to Mission, TX the same day so off we went with the pups to find our new home for the next few months.