Back to the Flea Market

The flea market has a vendor that makes sun screens to go on your RV awning. You can see thru the fabric, as it is only about 70 percent opaque. It will not stop the rain and it will flop in the wind. Thus it will breath and not make the area under your awning overly hot.

This is a fabric that is a woven vinyl, much like the fabric on expensive outdoor furniture. There are nine grommets along the bottom and I purchased stakes and elastic ball tie downs in order to stake it out.


I ordered a tweed one last Saturday. The flea market is closed on Monday and Tuesday. So they had it made for pickup on Wednesday. I also bought the matching bag to pack it away. I guess I was easy pickins, but if it does what we want, so what.


The thing that I see these used for here in our park, is to create a little private space between units, that are so darned close anyway. They give a little patio space without looking in the window of the unit beside you. So shade in the summer and privacy when you need it.

They also make end panels that hook into the sides and one lady told me to have a door sewn into the main piece, but that will have to be another time, as we will leave before we could have that stuff completed. Lets just see if we even use it. Have to be careful with the campfires!

We just hung out again all day, as it was another gray almost rain type of day. It did begin to rain along about 9PM. Just drizzle with the humidity of 9 million. We turned on the air even though the temp was only 65 outside. Just for the dehumidifier.

Spent a bunch of the night on the Skype program with the guys form Des Moines. A bunch of ham radio guys talking on their computers. Why did we ever bother to become hams?

We have run out of ideas to go see something new. Must be time to move on to the next camp!

The Day After

We seem to always just hang out for a day after our big outing days. So after going to Mexico we just hung around. I went up to the new office here in the park to see what we had to do to check out on Sunday.

We arrived here on January 3rd. So we are paid thru the second of February. That would be Saturday night as the last night. Move on Sunday. Did anyone mention that Sunday is the Super Bowl? I made reservations up in Corpus Christi just by the numerical date, not checking on the day of the week. You snooze, you loose. So we will be on the road the day of the Super Bowl. If I go back to my post from last week when the game became all Eastern teams, I wasn't too enthused anyway.

But the office only opens up in the afternoon for a short period on Sundays. So I will have to check out and pay on Saturday afternoon. That means I will have to turn in the cable modem then as well. Saturday evening without a working internet connection? I will not live thru that.

As many of you know, we have a repeater router that we use for internet in the parks. We took a standard Linksys WRT 54GL router and reprogrammed the processor with the DD-WRT software. By using the very latest beta version of that software, one of the options is to place the router into repeater mode.

This allows the router to check into a wifi net as a client, and then repeat the net as an access point. So if you sign onto the parks wifi you then become a hot spot of your own. This effectively extends the parks system to another circle around our router. You can sign in with security if you need it, and then repeat it with or without security on your side. I rarely set security on my SSid side. I prefer to go fishing to see how many folks will see our hotspot, and sign on to us rather than the park. The router's antennas are much better at staying connected than a laptop, so it makes for a much more reliable connection.

These folks do not know that they are really signing onto the park system and our router will only be just a little slower than the base system. We do count the signons, and often enjoy the power that we have to allow these folks to continue, or end their fun at will. We don't do that, but we could.

Here at Llano Grande we are in the older section of the park. It does not have wifi. I said "but I must have internet no mater what". They gave me a cable modem to connect to the TV cable system. They also gave me an ethernet cable to connect my laptop. I did that for about a week, but tired of the tether.

So out came the router with DD-WRT. The ethernet cable was plugged into the router. I set it up as an access point with two SSids. One of which I called "Linksys". Before I could even get my own computer signed onto the router, I had three other folks that instantly connected. I assume their computers were set to automatically connect to "Linksys".

So even though the park doesn't officially have wifi in the old part, well by golly, they do! I have 11 folks connected. Only two of which are Loyce and Myself.

All of that explanation just to say that nine folks here at the park, are not going to be pleased when I turn in the cable modem next Saturday.

As I write this I am totally aware that the weather in the Midwest has declined to a new low. Single digit temperatures, and wind in excess of 30 MPH. Burrr! So I feel almost guilty to report that we were 88 degrees today. It was not so windy either.

So I went to wash the truck, at the quarter car wash. Mexico is very dirty and it all blows here in South Texas. When it rains, which it doesn't very much, everything turns into mud. The roads are blacktop but they turn muddy as they just do not get wet very often. $5 worth of quarters later, even using the foaming brush it didn't come out very well. But the mud is gone.

Over night it got much cooler as we are getting the tail of the weather from up North. The cool is not supposed to last very long as the warm from Mexico is beginning to take over. We are wagering that we have passed the dead of winter as we move North to Corpus Christi. We really do not want to chase the cold as we move back North, but that may be how it turns out.

Another Day in Mexico

This is the gate as cars are headed into the US. Its five wide and each boarder guy has a booth. They check passports and ask what you are bringing into the US. If they pick you for a search, then you get out of this line and get pulled over into a search area. That is where the drug dogs crawl all over your car and they go thru your bags and trunk. I doesn't look too fun.

So walking will do for us. This is where the folks are backed up to pay their quarter and go thru the turn style.


Same old drill, the walkway is red over cream so we are still in the US.


As you come off of the bridge and go thru declarations. I was trying to capture the signs. Can you translate them? And there is that monument, that every first timer has to have his picture taken with. Note Loyce's silly sun hat as you will need to recognize it to pick her out two photos down.


Estacionamiento is parking, Declare Merchandise, Point of revision ? What does that mean?
Bathrooms, No Arms, Information, I'm not good when they start abbreviating, but they want to sell you a permit for your vehicle. And you have to declare more than $10,000 US Dollars.


You do not even get past the fence and a kid is there to shine your shoes. And the first sign is for Dental services. I ran into another sign farther up the street advertising dentistry for cowards. Oh My! I wonder what his technique is? Not today!


Remember the sun hat? That is all you can see of Loyce, as she is negotiating for a purse. This is interesting as it shows all the folks on the sidewalk are gringos. Bringing US dollars into Mexico.


I didn't take any more photos of the streets and stores, as they are just more of the same from the last time we were there.

So when your legs can't take it anymore, its time for the Red Snapper restaurant. From our table in the back of the dining room, this time we have a different perspective. The garlic shrimp was just as good as the last time we were here. I'll miss that!


The bar and the lady that collects the money. She sits right out in the middle and sees to it that the waiters bring the cash back to her. Thats exactly how the Fat Daddy Bar B Que worked the other night, on the US side of the bridge. But then they are only about 6 miles apart.


The decorations are interesting. This lamp adds to the otherwise bland florescent lighting.


So we went and bought a bunch of Vanilla again, and Loyce got her turtle that is made from plaster of paris. My back and feet were protesting today, more than they did the last time we were over here. Two days of flea market, and a trip to Mexico have taken their toll.

As we were leaving to cross the bridge, there were 30 or more Mexican soldiers standing in the street as you approached the bridge. They were on the sidewalk as we filed by. Their commanding officer was in an armored vehicle with a machine gun on its top. He was barking out orders and the men were following his instructions. It occurred to me that I should take their picture, but a night in jail didn't sound too good. So I let it pass. Besides they had real bullets in those weapons.

Customs? This time we know, with passports we could use the outside sidewalk desk, and we went right thru, without more than a question or two.

As we got back to the car the dash temperature was 87. No wonder I have been sweating, carrying all this loot. The wind is just howling out of the South about 25 to 30 MPH and as we now know, this is just common and to be expected on a warm winter day in the RGV. All that warm has to come here from somewhere.

I am struck by how routine this all is. The folks that sell all these items, are there every day. Seven days a week. They seem to have no sense of time. We are fairly stuck in our routines also, but wouldn't it get really bad, asking gringos for another dollar? We are so lucky to have been born North of this border.

Draining the Valley

An arroyo, according to the Spanish English dictionary that we bought here in the valley, is a stream or a brook. But in the desert areas of the US and Mexico, I most often find it to refer to a cut or wash thru the otherwise flat desert or farm fields.

When it rains here, there are fewer storm sewers that drain the water off of the streets and land, like we are used to in the Northern part of the US. Even in our rural farm areas we have ditches that drain things back to a stream. Large washes or swaths to a river up North, seem more full of vegetation and not as gulch like.

So with all that said, we here are on the Llano Grande Lake. This lake stretches back into the State park by the same name. This is a park that can be hiked and birded, and is a favorite past time of the winter Texans. The lake drains into the Arroyo Colorado.

But where does that go? It starts over West of Mission and comes thru here and goes over to Harlingen. It is the drainage ditch. It drains all of the fields as they are irrigated. It receives the run off water of all the storm sewers and rain collection systems. And the municipal waste treatment plants empty into it as well.

It crosses South of the main area of Harlingen and is quite wide. But it seems to have only a small creek at the bottom of a wide swath of deep uninhabited gulch. But we went over it the other day when it was raining quite hard, and it had about three or four times as much water in it then. It is the Valley's drain.

Over East of Harlingen, there is a Port. Port Harlingen is where barges of many commodities are unloaded. Where do these barges come from? The inter coastal water way of course. And they come from the Ocean up the Arroyo Colorado.


I am also told that the barges are loaded with raw brown sugar from the sugar cane plants, and are shipped back out to the Gulf of Mexico. All on the Arroyo Colorado.

Town of Rio Hondo

Fifteen miles East of Harlingen is the town of Rio Hondo. It is a sleepy burg of 2000 but it is on the Arroyo Colorado. Curiosity got the better of me so I went there. Not much to see, but at the end of the street you can see a bridge. A draw bridge. The whole deck raises. Straight up.

Draw Bridge

This is of course, so the barges and tugs can go thru. It was Sunday and there was no traffic on the river or arroyo. So if we irrigate the fields and flush the toilets, there will enough water for the barges to bring you some sugar for your iced tea.


Navigation ChannelThe channel goes to the sea thru an area called the Laguna Madre. This is a long shallow bay area along the intercoastal water way between South Padre Island and the Texas Coast. Mother Lagoon in Spanish.

This is a big political football. The university is testing water quality, and bacteria constantly, so there is no end to the information about the bad part of this system. If you just try to find out how the Arroyo Colorado works, that info is much harder to come by.

So we are on the edge of the Valley's drainage ditch. That is why we have a large levee all the way around the South part of the park. The neighbors to our left, have been coming here for fourteen years, and yes they have seen the arroyo flood and were very glad that the Levee was there to do its job.

As we have gone farther down the Rio Grande towards the ocean, we have observed that the river seems to become smaller and smaller. And when we were out in the estuary where the river meets the sea last week, there wasn't much to see. Except the boarder patrol.

The river drains back into the sea after we use it. By way of the Arroyo Colorado.

It reached 71 degrees yesterday and was still 60 after midnight. Today is to be warmer yet so here is hoping your weather will be nicer too.