Iowa Neighbors

Butch and I are friendly with our neighbor across the street in Jefferson, Bill, and his sister, Brenda. We are waving neighbors if you can get an idea of what we mean. We see each other and wave and we help each other out when we can. Bill keeps an eye on our house for us and when I empty the fridge of excess items before we leave in the fall Bill and Brenda will take it off my hands.

Brenda wrote us a letter and sent it to Texas and in it, she asked a few questions so I thought I would answer her questions in the blog, print out this section and send it by snail mail to her. Brenda asked how long it takes us to get here. It takes us 4 days when we go direct and are in a toot as we like to say. We take it easy and only go from 300 to 400 miles per day. The pandemic has made it necessary to be in a toot so last Spring and this Fall that has been how long it took. We like to take longer than that to cover the 1400 miles to Alamo Texas by stopping in Harrisonville Mo for a few days staying at our Grandaughter Amanda's place and visiting with our Missouri family, Amanda and Brad, their children, Elise and Leo, and our son Gary and his wife Susan. Then many times we have stopped in the Canyon Lake, Texas area to stay with friends Terry and Lisa Linder, sometimes for as long as a week. Both of these places have RV hookups for our motorhome making our stays quite comfortable for us as we feel just as at home in our RV as we do in our tiny house in Jefferson. Many times in the past we have taken 2 to 3 weeks to get down to our winter spot.

Does it ever get cool down here? Yes, it sure does. Last year was quite cool and it started in November which is very rare. I was looking at the blog I keep and last year, 2019 the 13th of November it was 39! That is extremely rare. Right now normal temps are in the 80's daytime and the '60s at night. We had a cool morning today with a low of 52. It felt good as it was in the 90's last week. Our wintertime temperatures here are much like our Springtime and Summer temps in Iowa.

Do we ever get to see animals down here and if so what do we see? The Rio Grande Valley where we stay has many animals we can see. The last park we were in had parrots that were wild and flew over twice a day. When the trees were in bloom they would stop for a snack. I have quite a few parrot pictures from our time in that park. There are wildlife areas where we can see ocelots, javelinas, alligators, and many, many kinds of birds such as green jays, chachalacas, and of course the noisy pesty grackles. Ocelots are a rare member of the cat family, Javelinas are wild pigs and Chachalacas are like a pheasant and make a noise like their name. Grackles look similar to a blackbird but are more slender and very noisy. We also have squirrels. The Rio Grande Valley is known worldwide for the many birds we have and people come here from all over the world to see them. Maybe not this year but they will again when we can say the Covid-19 is not as big a threat.

And here are a few photos I have taken in the past couple of days.

Butch visits Thelma

This is a cane field being burned off. First, they post on all four corners, signs in English and Spanish of their intent to set it on fire. Before they set it ablaze on all four corners, they make a few trips around the field with a loudspeaker proclaiming in English and Spanish their plan to set it afire. There have been incidents of people losing their lives in the past.