Rio Grande Valley, Texas - Pharr

Feb 8 - 15/2013  Weather is hot!  up to 92 Sunday, then cooling into the 80's.  low at night is high 60's.  Very nice weather.

Only 1 main road across the Rio Grande Valley Hwy 83

We received an email from friends of Billy's (hockey buddies) that they are in Pharr, Texas and our presence is requested at a Canadian Chatham-Kent BBQ.  So we decided that it would be easy to change our route and just go from Galveston right down to the border of Texas/Mexico.   Not getting carried away we drove about 4 hours and stopped overnight at Victoria-Coleto Koa.  The Rio Grande Valley is about 75 miles along the Rio Grande River which divides Texas from Mexico and starts at the Gulf of Mexico.  It is a very busy area and we did not take the motorcycle out the whole week - just too congested for our liking.

Happy Hour in the pool at Tropic Star

Christmas Cactus

This area is Snowbird haven; there are over 450 RV parks and it reaches across about 7 different cities that run into each other - Mission, McAllen, Pharr, Mercedes, Harligen, Rio Grande City, Brownsville and Edinburg.  We stayed at Tropic Star in Pharr, Texas it is a mega RV park, with about 750 sites.  Nice place with great amenities and tons of activities. At first we could not understand why?    After spending the week we understand what draws the Winter Texan's here - the very warm weather, not too humid, cool evenings, and very inexpensive.  Now there are so many parks that the activities abound.   It is also known as the Square Dance Capital of the World.   You have to see this.  We snuck into the dance on Saturday night and it was sold out - over 500 people.  The outfits were something and the dancing looked like fun!  (The two short videos you just need to hit the arrow button to play them.)

As well we find it funny that we are 1676 miles from home and what do we do?  Get together with 30 other people the same distance from home to have a BBQ.  Ironically there were two other couples from Lighthouse Cove!   Glad we came to see this area but it is time to move on to something a little slower paced for Billy and Rosey - not so much traffic so we are headed to South Padre Island.