Progreso, Mexico

The day after Christmas we packed up with friends and drove to the Mexican border, a lengthy trip of a whole 12 miles. We parked on the American side and walked across the border into Progreso, Mexico.
















Main street is busy, crowded, and tight.














There always seems to be new construction or reconstruction going on, but it just never seems to get finished. This building looks like it will be quite nice and there were workers actually working!!!



Shopping is usually colorful.














Sharon liked the clothes in this shop.













And here we find Sharon paying the Texas tax on the liquor she bought in Progreso. Kind of knocks the edge off the great buys on alcohol in Mexico.





All in all, it was a nice day. Had a good lunch. Saw interesting and colorful shops. And best of all didn't buy anything (except Sharon's liquor).

Hildago - Festival of Lights

Christmas is approaching. Last year about this time I sent you all pictures of Christmas lights from Mesa, Arizona. This year the pics are from Hildago, Texas. This display was quite impressive considering the town's population is only a smidge over 7,000.

We also were lucky enough to attend a concert by the Valley View High School Mariachi Band, and they were really good. Last year they won the national championship at a competition held in South Florida. Anyway, enjoy the pictures and you'll just have to take my word that the band was as good as I say.









PS Last issue I said we were in southeast Texas, but one of my readers corrected me. This area is referred to as the "Valley" of south Texas.

The "Valley"

We are now in the Rio Grande Valley of Southeast Texas and only 40 or 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. We will stay until next March. There seems to be no features that would help one to see that this is a valley, as the land is flat as far as one can see (and then some more). Maybe I'll do a little research about the valley and get back to you later.

As for The "Valley", well that is what the section of the Rio Grande Valley from Rio Grande City, Texas to Brownsville, Texas is called. It is a favorite area for snowbirds, whom the locals refer to as Winter Texans. We haven't been here long enough to make any fair judgments, but here are some observations. RV park prices average considerably less that what we experienced in Arizona or Florida (and so is golf). The humidity is high, but we are seeing only occasional showers. This is a Hispanic area. I am guessing the permanent population in this area is 80% Hispanic. Based on what I have noticed, they hold most of the public offices, are the anchors on the TV news, and I hear Spanish as often as English. More than half of the TV stations on antennae broadcast in Spanish. The scenery here is not dramatic and I expect my future blogs will have more architecture than landscape.

During the trip from Big Bend National Park we made several stops, including staying several days in Del Rio, Texas. While there we walked across the border to Cuidad Acuna. As like most border towns, it was attuned to the tourist trade. Here, however, it seemed to be more the nighttime tourists looking for bars and nightclubs. We saw few Americans walking the streets that afternoon. The three pictures are of the Rio Grande River taken from the international bridge, a statue (I think it is significant of Mexico), and looking down one of the main streets.







This next picture is a blooper. You probably think that I searched all over to find this, but in fact I've seen many similar bloopers just since we arrived. The "C" in combo blew off in the wind, but the "u" in double??? I expect that when English is you second language, spelling might just be a challenge.

Big Bend National Park – Intro

Wow, this seems to be a big park, yet it is only 15th largest in the national park system.

The park is more than 40 miles North to South and the same East to West, containing over 800,000 acres. Established as Texas Canyons State Park in 1933, it became a National Park in 1944. Most of the park is harsh and dry. Only 8 to 10 inches of rain falls per year with the exception of the higher elevations where enough falls to barely support trees. Browns and tans predominate, not much is green, except close to the Rio Grande River where there is a narrow band of grasses and trees and in some of the higher areas of the mountains.

The park is a desert combination of flat, rolling and mountainous landscape. The whole park is dry and high enough that there are no large cacti as you find in the Sonora Desert of Arizona, but the prickly pear abound. Much of the terrain is scarred by washes, arroyos, and canyons of all sizes. This occurs because even though there isn’t much rain, when it does come it is violent and heavy. Flash flooding during the rainy season is a guarantee.

The Rio Grande River is the most important feature of the area, generally because it carved many of the parks most distinctive features. The river has its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado. It runs from there for 1865 miles into the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. During its first 600 miles the river is heavily used for irrigation and backed up by many dams. It retains only a portion of its once mighty flow, but fortunately is supported by Mexican tributaries.

The park is a hot bed of animal, reptile and insect life, but you don’t see much of it during the hot part of the day. There are black bear, mountain lion, coyote, javelina, jackrabbit, birds, and less popular things such as scorpions. There are also tarantulas, so many that the park should put up warning signs on the highways that read “Slow – Tarantula Crossing”. We spotted at least 10 between the entrance and the first visitor’s center, a trip of 20 miles.

Getting to the most popular landmarks is easy as there are about 120 miles of blacktop. The backcountry is also accessible as there are hundreds of miles of dirt roads. These range from just bumpy to four-wheel drive only. Hope you don’t mind, but I am sticking to the bumpy only and avoiding anything more challenging.

Okay, that should be enough editorializing………the other issues will deal with the most notable features of the park.

Big Bend NP – Boquillas Canyon

There is a lot of prickly pear cactus. This is one of the pinkish colored once, not seen as much as the greenish ones. By the way, the prickly pear is edible, if you can get all the needles off. That’s a real job and it can leave your hands full of holes.

Although the Rio Grande River is smaller than anticipated, it hasn’t always been that way. It has been mighty at points in its history as evidenced by the canyons it has carved. This is Boquillas Canyon. It is about 1,500 feet from the river to the top of the canyon.

This is Victor’s river side house. It is on the Mexican side of the river and Victor is a Mexican living in the town of Las Bouquillas. Victor has a powerful and pleasant singing voice, which he uses to entertain hikers as they approach the canyon’s mouth on the US side, while he remains on the Mexican side. But Victor has a motive…

Victor sells colorful stones, painted rocks, walking sticks, and wire wrap scorpions. He uses his small boat to come across the river and pick-up his money and restock. He operates on the honor system, but I suspect he can cross very quickly if he sees things go awry. He claims that the trinkets are made by the local school children.

It is sad that because of the border issues, you can no longer cross the river and hike to Victor’s village. Many park visitors used to be ferried across by the Mexicans to buy trinkets and eat in their café. This undoubtedly has been an extreme hardship on the village as there is no industry within 100 miles.

Big Bend NP - Santa Elena Canyon

The Santa Elena Canyon is another of the Rio Grande River’s better works. The canyon is over 1,500 feet deep and 20 miles long. Today it is a popular 2 day raft trip. A hundred years ago it was a trip from hell and many a wooden boat was converted into toothpicks.

Here we are inside the canyon, looking further in. Much of that greenery is a reed or giant grass that resembles bamboo.













Here we are still inside the canyon looking out. That vast flood plain was farmed until the 1940’s. American’s farmed this land, but many were of Mexican heritage, but born in the US.

This is a line camp that was used by the Homer Wilson ranch. He grazed over 4,000 sheep and 2,500 goats on the slopes of the mountains to escape the heat. It was abandoned in 1945, but still looks as if it is in use. Life in this area was tough. The closest rail line was at Alpine, 100 miles north. It took 10 to 14 days to make the trip with loaded, mule drawn wagons.

Big Bend NP – Chisos Basin

The Chisos Basin is exactly what its name describes, it a basin (like a bowl) surrounded by the Chisos Mountains. You stand in the middle of the basin at an elevation of 5,400 feet and look 2,000 feet up in any direction at the Chisos Mountains. I found the basin to be the most scenic spot in the park, probably because it had more green than the lower areas.

I am just going to spin around and take pictures in different directions so you can see a little of what I did.










Hope you enjoyed Big Bend National Park. Please forgive any haziness in the pictures. BBNP has become the worst for air quality, in terms of visibility impairment, of any western national park. About 50% of the haze is naturally occurring from dust, smoke from forest fires, etc. But the balance is man made with 22% coming from the eastern US (most of that from the Ohio Valley). Only 11% is caused by industry in Texas, 4% from western states, and 7% from Mexico.

Elephant Butte and Etc.

Our trip South has some built in time for stops. The first of those is Elephant Butte, New Mexico. Why you ask? Well, because it is there.

After leaving Show Low and traveling East on Highway 60, we made an unexpected find, a VLA. That is a Very Large Array. Still in the dark. The VLA is the most powerful, flexible, widely used radio telescope in the world. Completed in 1980 and operated by the National Science Foundation, the VLA has been used for more than 10,000 astronomical observation projects. You see only a handful of the 20 or more dishes on the observatory grounds.


Construction began in 1911 and at the time of its completion in 1916, Elephant Butte dam was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.




The dam backs up the Rio Grande into a 36,000 acre reservoir. It is the largest body of water in New Mexico and an extremely popular place for boaters.


I found only one golf course in the area and it has only been open one year. However, it is a really up scale course, so much so that I didn’t even bother to check on the green fees. Located in a valley and spreading out and up, the course is landscaped beautifully and has sculpture and stonework to match.

There are several ghost towns in this area. I just randomly picked one, Chloride. The town began as a tent city in 1880, with the discovery of silver “in them thar hills”. It grew to over 3,000 souls, but with the decline in the price of silver, it all but disappeared by 1900. A handful of the residents stayed on, while the village disintegrated for 80 years. Since early 1980 the village has been under restoration, primarily by a motivated ex-IBM employee that “discovered” and fell in love with the place. At the peak, the town consisted of 9 bars, stores, a hotel, black smith, an assay office, and of course a red light district (and therefore no church). Here is the restored general store, which is now the town’s museum.

Let us end with a bit of humor. I leave it to you to see what makes this shot funny. Somebody in the ghost town had a dry, but comedic sense of the world. If you need help, email me.

Show Low, Arizona

Tomorrow morning we will leave our park here in Show Low and go East on the main street which is named Deuce of Clubs (also know as US Highway 60). But, I can’t leave without telling you the story of how Show Low got its name. You see, in 1876 two ranchers had laid claim to the same 100,000 acres. Their names were Corydon Cooley and Marion Clark. They agreed that the land would not support two families, but neither was willing to buy the other out. So………


……they decided to settle the matter by playing a game of Seven Up. They played at Cooley’s kitchen table. Clark was not faring well. He was holding a 3 (don’t ask, I have no idea how you play Seven Up, I only drink it with whiskey). So, seeing a way to win while he was down and almost out, he said “show low and you win the ranch”. Cooley drew the Deuce of Clubs. We’ve got a winner……..

He renamed the ranch Show Low and the road that went in front of his house to Deuce of Clubs. The town that later grew up along that road in front of his ranch also became known as Show Low.

Fort Apache & the Kinishba Ruins

Located in the heart of Apache country, Fort Apache was established on May 16, 1870. The historic fort is near the present town of Whiteriver. It’s purpose was to assist the White Mountain Apache Tribe to peacefully protect their lands.

Fort Apache is perhaps most widely recognized for association with the famous renegade leaders from various Apache bands, such as Geronimo and Cochise. Geronimo was held in the stockade and local legend has it that he just disappeared right out of his cell. My local Apache source (cashier at the museum) tells me that what happened was that Geronimo buried himself in the dirt floor. When the guard came by with his meal, he found the cell empty and left the door open as he rushed off to sound the alarm. Geronimo them got up out of the dirt and snuck out.

This is the oldest structure remaining. It was built in 1871 as the commanding officer’s quarters. I think the picnic tables on the porch were probably added more recently…

Here we see the commanding officer’s quarters built in 1892. Pretty classy looking place. The army’s idea was that such structures would give the officers and their families some little bit of the back home trappings of civilization and take the edge off the desolation.
In 1923 the US government authorized converting the fort into a boarding school for the Indians. The school was named the Theodore Roosevelt School. Initially the children were housed in the old barracks, but in 1932 dorms were built. Here you see the girl’s dorm, still in use today. Although in earlier days there were hundreds of students at any one time, there are now less than 50.

Here we see some of the girl students circa 1975.










About 4 miles from the fort sits the Kinishba ruins, occupied between 800 and 1400 AD. There is no clear evidence that this was ever occupied by Apache. It was most likely built and occupied by ancestors of today’s Zuni and Hopi. The pueblo was restored between 1931 and 1939 by the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona students, and Apache workers. Unfortunately the ruins were not maintained after that and have again fallen into disrepair.

By the way, both of these sites are designated National Historic Sites, but they are owned and operated by the White Mountain Apache Tribe, as is the school.

Petrified Forest National Park

Easily accessible from exit 311 on I-40 in Northeast Arizona lies the Petrified Forest NP. Here I found fossils older than the oldest of my old fossil friends. The fossilized trees in the park started out in lush swampy lands more than 225 million years ago.

Petrified trees are not uncommon, they are found in all 50 states and in most countries around the world. The abundance here in the park, however, is greater than any other area in the world. The process that allowed the cells of the trees to be replaced by colorful crystal patterns is amazing, leaving behind beautiful “stone” trees.



The trees were immense, some over 200 feet tall. Although there are much larger and longer examples in the park, this picture gives you the idea.



PFNP isn’t restricted to fossilized trees. A portion of the park is in the famous Arizona Painted Desert. At sunrise and sunset the desert colors come out in full strength.



The land is rugged and was primarily formed by millions of years of sediment build up. It was sculpted into its current “badland” look by erosion from both wind and water. The colors come from the varied makeup of the layers of sediment. White layers are usually sandstone, reds are from iron stains, and layers of volcanic ash also contribute unique colors.



The land was also used by native tribes over the last 10,000 years. They were thoughtful enough to leave behind not only ruins of their dwellings, but their art work in the form of petroglyphs.



The park is also the site of many active research sites for paleontologists endlessly trying to sort out the animal and plant fossils in order to figure out what it was like 225 million years ago.

Going to Greer

As I mentioned in the last blog, we are in Show Low, Arizona. We came here to visit friends and because the park offers a special of $99 for the month of October. Not only is this a nice area, the price was right.

Okay, now about the area. Show Low is about 100 miles Northeast of Phoenix at the intersection of US 60 and Arizona highways 77 and 260.

This is NOT the Arizona that you think about when you day dream about fun in the sun. It is NOT creosote bushes, cactus, and blowing sand. This area is high, around 6,000 feet. The altitude keeps the temperature considerably cooler than the Phoenix area. When Phoenix is 115, Show Low is only in the 90’s. This area also gets quite a bit of snow in the winter, making for more moisture. The moisture makes for trees, real trees, like Ponderosa pine and Aspen. This part of Arizona is where the Arizonian desert dwellers escape for the summers.

We recently took a trip from Show Low to Greer, about 60 miles Easterly. The first two pictures are in Greer, a very popular, rustic, and small resort area. The other two are on Lake Hawley and along the road to the Lake.










I must make a small confession. I have touched up these pictures. I wasn’t satisfied with the color rendition my camera captured, so I puffed up the color a notch. For you purists, I apologize, for the rest of you, you are welcome. I am contemplating a new camera as this one seems to have suffered slightly from the fall we took off a skateboard ramp while in Canada. If I do buy a new one, it will be my third digital camera in the last four years. Hope the next one takes falls better the last two.