Day 123 - Monday, March 31 - Harlingen to Victoria

 Today we drove from Encore Lakewood in Harlingen, TX to Victoria RV Park in Victoria, TX, a little over 200 miles. We have stayed here in Victoria at least 3 previous times. They recently raised the price from $12/night to $15/night but it is still an awesome deal for a full hook up site.

Leaving Lakewood I took this photo of one of the units at the back. Note the dark line alone the skirting that shows the water level during the high water.

The following photos were taken during the first 15 miles north of Harlingen.

Below is a corn field that is partially underwater. I asked one of the guys at the campground why we have seen so much corn this year. He told me that in addition to the drought in the Rio Grande Valley Mexico is shorting the amount of water they are supposed to let enter the Rio Grande River. The amount of water available for irrigation has been reduced. Normally a lot of these fields would contain sugar cane, but it requires more water than corn.

We stopped at a rest area to eat lunch. It is TIGHT when trucks or campers are on both  sides of the road through the rest area.

The view out our window as we ate lunch. Note the sign in the middle of the photo.

Parked at Victoria RV Park, the 2nd time. We were supposed to be in Site 2. We were almost completely set up when Kathy told me that she the electricity in part of the coach was not working properly. There is no attendant at the campground so I called the office. The lady apologized and told me to move to 

Site 3. No problems with Site 3.

The view through our windshield.

Every one of the 7 or 8 nights we have stayed here we have watched the deer come out of the woods and graze in the evening. Usually we have only seen 4-8 but there was a whole herd tonight.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 122 - Sunday, March 30 - No Church Today

 Kathy went to the campground church service this morning. When she got home we headed out to go to the Cowboy Church. When we got to the exit we normally use it was barricaded because of flood waters still on the roads. We thought we would just get off at the next exit and go "cross country" to get to the church. The next exit was also barricaded. We were finally able to exit at the next exit and decided that if there was still so many roads flooded in the area we should just go back home, which we did.

Actually we did make a stop at Walmart and picked up a few groceries and then over to the Golden Corral for lunch before getting home.

It was hot and humid here today. The high temperature was a mostly sunny 91, with lots of humidity. Kathy walked over to the puzzle room, took apart the last two puzzles she had put together and put them away. I sat inside in the AC and read.

In the late afternoon I went out, dumped our waste tanks, added some more water to our fresh water tank and put away our outside furniture. Dennis & Geri, neighbors behind us, were out and I went over to tell them we were leaving tomorrow. They, mostly Dennis, sit outside a lot. Lots of people stop and visit with them as they go by, walking, biking or in golf carts. They spend 6-7 months in their small manufactured home here, the only one in the campground. During the summer months they live in their cottage on a lake in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. If we are able to go back to the UP this summer we will give them a call to and go out to eat some night.

A little later Jim & Deb (Jim is the campground Pastor while down here) stopped by to say goodbye. They spend about 7 months here. They bought a park model unit last fall. They live in their 5th wheel when they aren't down here. Their "home base" is in Kansas but they also do some travelling during the summer months.

Lord willing the plan is to head north tomorrow.

God is good. I pray that He bless you and yours. He has blessed me.

PS. Before we headed off to church I was reviewing the notes I took last Sunday. Romans 8:27-31 was some of the Scripture.  Chris asked us to remember the story most of us are familiar with, two boys arguing and one says, "I'm telling my Dad and he can whip your Dad." The point he was making was why don't I/we spend more time sharing our joys and problems with our heavenly Father? Is it because I/we don't truly believe He is capably of "whipping" that which is plaguing me/us? 

Days 120 & 121 - Friday & Saturday, March 28 & 29 - Lots of Flooding

 From 10PM Thursday night to 4 PM Friday 21" of rain fell on the Harlingen area. Below are some photos of the campground. The water level had dropped by about 3" when I took these photos.

All the flooding was on the north side of the clubhouse. I don't think anyone actually had water inside their units, but it was close. We are on the south side of the clubhouse. There was minor ponded water in low spots, but no flooding.

While it was raining we had a 20 mph wind, with 30 mph gusts. We had a few drips inside where water blew under one of our slide roof seals, but nothing significant. Our biggest problem was our refrigerator quit working. A hard driving rain can trip a sensor on the back of the refrigerator. It happened to us once before. The relay that trips is totally enclosed in plastic. You can reset it with a strong magnet. The magnets we had were not strong enough to reset it so I thought I would go to the hardware store and buy a stronger one. Before I got to the first significant intersection the street was covered with water. I cut through a church parking lot to get over to the frontage road that runs along the interstate. It is one way going west. The photo is looking east. Fortunately I wanted to go west (turn left) on it. It looked like 5 of the cars in this photo had stalled out. I got back to the campground without have to drive through any significant water. I asked several of the guys at the campground and one of them had a magnet that was strong enough to reset the relay.

We had planned on heading north Thursday or Friday but when we saw the weather reports we decided to wait until Saturday. Because of all the flooding we postponed our leaving until Monday.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 119 - Thursday, March 27 - Who Has the Plans for the Ark?

Rain has been coming down almost nonstop since 10PM last night. Mid morning a person from the campground said we had received 4.9". I just looked at my Weatherbug app and it says we have received 15.45" of rain. I don't know if that is for the entire storm or for the today. Another app says 11.62" so far today and projects another 3.25" before the rain stops around 4AM. We have had a lot of 15-20 mph steady winds with some 35 mph gusts.

I don't think we will go look, but it would be interesting to see what the Rio Grande river looks like tomorrow morning.

We went to Cheddar's for supper with the campground Pastor and his wife. He drove. He drove up close to our steps to pick us up and dropped us off at the door at Cheddar's. We had jackets so we didn't get to wet. On the way back to the campground you drive through a nice residential neighborhood. For most of the way only the center 8' of the street was not covered with water. From maybe 300' the street was completely under water and the water was over the curb on both sides.

Kathy has gotten a couple of texts from campground residents. One lady noted that two sites at the far end of the campground are now under water. Another, who lives in a park model trailer, said the the water was up to the top of the first step to get into her unit. She said it was touching the bottom of her car.

Our refrigerator quit working a couple of hours ago. The error message is one that indicates a safety relay has tripped. The issue can be caused by driving rain. It happened to us once before and I reset the relay using a magnet (found the trick on the Internet). During a short break in the rain I went out and tried it but the relay would not reset. In the morning I will try drying the back of the refrigerator with a hair dryer and try resetting it again. I had to wade through 1-1.5" water to get from our door around to the refrigerator access panel. Most of our site is several inches above the roadway and the road seems to be draining well in front of our site.

We are under the red dot. This was a display of lightning strikes at 5:23AM. If I had done another screenshot at 5:30PM there were even more strikes in or area. 

Rainfall intensity display from this morning.The most intense rainfall is centered over south Padre Island. The blue icon points at us.

Rainfall intensity at 6:45PM.

I get an Emergency Flood Warning notification on my phone, from the National Weather Service, about every 90 minutes. People are warned to stay off the roads unless they are fleeing flood waters or in and evacuation area.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Days 117 & 118 - Tuesday & Wednesday, March 25 & 26

 Tuesday morning I went back up to the Cowboy Church and helped with the announcers stand.

This will get sided, for storage, and this level will get a plywood floor. A roof will be added above this level. The high for the day  was 88 degrees. It was hot and humid. The guy on the left is Manuel, he works at the Ranch. The guy on the right is Marty. He is another Winter Texan who attends the Cowboy Church. He and his wife are at a different campground down here. Up north they live in Michigan's "thumb".

This is looking the other way at the arena.

These are the sorting pens on the other side of the announcers stand.

Neither Kathy nor I remember seeing corn down here when we have been here before. Maybe we have left before it came up. This is a field next to the Cowboy Church. On our way back from the flea market on Wednesday we saw a field with knee high corn.

Today we went over to the DonWes flea market and bought a couple of bags of grapefruit and a bag of onions to take back with us. The "Veggieman" was almost sold out of grapefruit. Probably a lot of us Winter Texans stocking up before heading north. It rained big time, for down here, while we were at the flea market and when we got out of the car for lunch. We got soaked. The flea market is in Donna, TX about 20 miles west of us. When we got back to the campground it had not rained at all. We did get a very brief light shower in the afternoon.

Tonight was our last potluck dinner down here for the season. There were probably only about 35 people. Again, lots of folks have already headed north. All the food was not on the tables at this time, there are always leftovers for folks to take home.

We had planned to leave tomorrow or Friday but with rain and winds in the forecast for both days we decided we will wait and leave on Saturday.

God is good. I pray that He bless you and yours. He has blessed me.

Days 115 & 116 - Sunday & Monday, March 23 &24 - Cowboy Church

 Sunday Kathy went to church at the campground and then we both drove up to the Cowboy Church for the service. There were actually some empty seats, winter Texans are heading home. Kathy went over and worked on a puzzle in the afternoon. I spent some time on the treadmill, and doing a little bike riding.

Monday - Kathy led here 8 AM Women's Bible Study and came home. I went up to the Cowboy Church and helped work on the new announcer's stand for the arena. We started at 9:30. I wore out by 12:30 when we stopped for lunch. Manny & Marty were going to work more in the afternoon. I plan on going back up tomorrow morning.

Kathy & I went to a late lunch at Cracker Barrel. We had not been to one for a LONG time. I ordered a breakfast and it was fine. Kathy was disappointed in her meal. After that we stopped at Walgreen's to pick up a prescription for her and to order one for me. We stopped at Walmart on the way hope, to do some grocery shopping.

After all the recent wind, causing dust to blow around, our car was filthy. I washed it in the afternoon.

Today's high was a partly cloudy 86 degrees. 

PS. Please pray for my 70 year old cousin Jeff. His parole request was turned down again, I think for the 4th time since December 2019. Jeff is serving a 20 year sentence for shooting and killing the married man he found in bed with his estranged wife on Christmas day 2009. He also wounded his wife. He went out and sat on his front porch and called 911. He has been incarcerated since that day.

God is good. I pray that He bless you and yours. He has blessed me.

Days 112, 113 & 114 - Thursday, Friday & Saturday, March 20, 21 & 22 - Not Much Happening

Thursday we didn't do anything memorable. Friday we went to CiCi's Pizza for lunch. Kathy really liked their BBQ chicken pizza. The pepperoni was the only pizza that I tried. It was okay, but nothing special. They did have a nice salad bar.

One of our undercounter fluorescent lights quit working. I checked the bulbs and they were okay so I'm assuming the ballast is bad. We had a ballast go bad in our other coach and I bought an LED bulb that replaced the 12" fluorescent tubes, but I had to bypass the bad ballast that made the florescent tubes work with 12v DC. The LED's used 12v. After I installed the LED tubes I bought some LED strips that I was going to use if another fixture went bad, none did. I think I still have the LED strips back in Centertown. 

To get at the wiring on this fixture I had to drill out some pop rivets to get it apart. After lunch we went over to Johnny's Hardware and I bought some small bolts to use to reassemble the fixture. I was disappointed, Johnny's didn't have the LED tubes nor LED strips. I think I will just wait until we get back home to see if I still have, and can find, the LED strips that I bought 10 years ago.

I love going to Johnny's. They didn't have the LED lights but they do have interesting stuff.

Some of their ammo and reloading items.

And some of their guns.

They also have a fair amount of fishing equipment. Awesome for a hardware store.

I think we have set March 28th as the date we are going to start making our way north. The plan is to arrive back in Centertown somewhere between April 3rd & 6th.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours. He has blessed me.

Day 111 - Wednesday, March 19 - Hidalgo, TX

 Today we drove over to Hidalgo, TX so that I could go through the Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum. The trip is faster if you take I2 over to Pharr, TX and then drop down to to Hidalgo but we chose to take US281 which runs closer to the  border. It was a 41 mile trip, driving time close to one hour. 

Reminiscing - In the 70's, when we lived in Park Forest, a suburb on the south side of Chicago, I used to come to a couple of cities on the east side of Texas to do structural inspection work, for a couple of weeks. One year, after I was done with the inspection work, I took some vacation time and Kathy and our boys flew down down to Houston. We drove along the coast and then along the border. We walked across the bridge from Brownsville, TX into Matamoras, Mexico and said, "This does not look like any place we want to be." We turned around and walked back across. We did the same think at Hidalgo/Reynosa. We tried a 3rd time about 150 miles further along the border, in Laredo/Nuevo Laredo. At that time Nuevo Laredo was a nice town. We spent most of the day walking around on the Mexican side of the border. All three of those crossings are now listed as some of the most dangerous places for US tourists to cross into Mexico.

The Hidalgo Pumphouse was built in 1909 to provide commercial scale irrigation water to the area. The pumps were run by steam engines that were initially fired with mesquite. Additional pumps were added on a regular basis until eventually the Pumphouse had a peak capacity of  350,000 gallons/minute. One "factoid" posted on the wall said that it takes one million gallons of water to produce one bale of cotton. In 1983 the Pumphouse was finally shutdown when it was replaced by a new facility with electric pumps.

You could do a self-guided walking tour of the facility.

The grounds around the Pumphouse were quite pleasant. Kathy wasn't interested in going through the Pumphouse so she walked around the grounds a little.

By the time I finished exploring it was time for lunch. We headed over to the Black Diamond BBQ, a few blocks away.

We both ordered brisket sandwiches with green beans and mac and cheese for sides. The food was excellent.

Across the street and down the block a little was the old courthouse. We didn't go down to see if it was open.

Below are some photos I took as we traveled back and forth. The wind was blowing and there was a lot of dust in the air.

The border wall and onions. We saw thousands of acres of onions, and a lot of cabbages.

Border crossing at Pharr, TX.

More border wall and onions. 

Harvesting onions.

Entrance for the Rio Gun Club south of La Feria, TX.

When we got back home we went grocery shopping. It was a full day.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you  and yours.

Day 110 - Tuesday, March 18 - Another Windy Day

 At 11:30 PM the wind has finally calmed down a little. It is currently only blowing steady 10-15 mph, with gusts up to 25 mph. Up until an hour ago it was still blowing at a steady 20 mph with gusts of 30 mph, as it had been since early yesterday. I pulled our living room slide in to reduce the buffeting from the wind. Today's high was a mostly sunny 83 degrees.

Kathy went over and worked on a puzzle in the morning. After lunch I went to the Harlingen Arts & Heritage Museum, about a 20 minute drive. Some friends mentioned it when we were discussing the Iwo Jima Museum. https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/days-65-66-tuesday-wednesday-february-6.html, which we went to last year. 

On the way to the museum I had to wait for a train that was carrying wind turbine blades. I think there were about a dozen individual blades. They were the only freight on the train.

They were loaded "butt to butt". Each pair took up 7 rail cars.

On to the museum.

The main building had two rooms of quilts on display from this years Quilt Show.

The museum grounds.

Below is the Lon C. Hill Home, built in 1904. Mr. Hill was instrumental in the founding of the city. This was a rough place in that time. One photo of a prominent family included 4 men and 2 women. All of them were wearing guns. The ladies wore gunbelts over their dresses. The notation with the photo said it was common for every adult to wear a gun.

The first hospital in Harlingen. It opened in 1923.

Something we older folks probably remember being told about but have filed away, was scourge of polio. A major outbreak in New York in 1916 killed over 2,000 people. During the 1952 outbreak in the US 57,628 cases were reported, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. I don't know where the photo below was taken, probably not in Harlingen. It shows a room full of polio survivors in "iron lungs".

I walked a loop around the campground after returning home, a half mile. It was hard walking into the 20 mph wind. It amazes me that the skinny trunks on palm trees can stand up to high winds. I took this photo during my walk.

 

In the evening, after Kathy watched Wheel of Fortune (she is so incredibly good at it) and another show we binge watched a couple of episodes of Life. I think it originally aired in 2007. We remembered that we had watched it then. At the time we were disappointed that it only lasted two seasons. After a couple of weeks of watching we are up to Season 2 Episode 12.

God is good. I pray that He bless you and yours. He has blessed me.