Walking to the Rio Grande

Just below our campsite is a 2 mile hike to the Rio Grande/Seminole canyon

junction. We walked this on Valentine’s day.
The area is a true desert. The walk was a treat and the overlook was amazing.

This is Will with the Rio Grande behind. Mexico is the left bank.

Across the river is another ancient pictograph site which is only accessible by boat.

You can see the dock in the middle of this pic. The site is 40 feet above.

We hope to visit it next week

The sign on the fence says "state park boundary"...the view behind is typical desert in this area.

Seminole Canyon

We moved to this state park on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert on Feb. 11.
It is very remote (the nearest town is Del Rio TX) and near the juncture of the Rio Grande and Pecos river. Of course it is very close to Mexico and heavily traveled by illegal immigrants and the US Border Patrol.

The park has amazing canyons which are especially important for their ancient pictographs and fossils.
We have taken one tour to see some paintings and the canyon bottom and have 3 more to do.













We also intend to put our little boat into the Pecos river (just below this bridge which is 273 feet above the water) and travel 8 miles up the Pecos River and 2 miles the other way to the Rio Grande.
The fishing in this area is excellent (a couple at the boat launch had caught 20 big white bass that day).












Mona at the bottom of Seminole canyon.

The park mascot...a shaman sculpture. Very intricate.










Illegal immigrant checking out the high rise housing on the canyon wall.

Connecting with the dolphins

As we get ready to leave this park on February 11, we are tying up loose ends. One thing that we wanted to do was to visit with the dolphins. There is a remarkable, small family operation called “dolphin connection” www.dolphin-connection.org
While this business caters to tourists, it really is about dolphin study. The owner-operator is a former University professor who studies dolphins by using the fees collected for his work and to educate the public.

We luckily found ourselves alone on the tour. Penny was allowed to come along as we were told “Dolphins like dogs”.





Here is Penny playing lookout...she growled when dolphins were near the boat....of course long before we saw them!




The tour was a treat as the captain intimately knows each dolphin in his bay (over 200!) by sight and was happy to share his immense knowledge of dolphins.
Did we actually touch dolphins??? They allowed us to come within inches but stayed just that far away.
We would go again in a minute!

Weather gets us into trouble….

January was the wettest and coldest January in Corpus Christi in about 25 years. Rain was about 21/2 times normal. Lake Corpus Christi rose about 2 feet….still about 8 feet below capacity due to a 3 year drought (seemingly broken when the Presley’s arrived).

This picture is of the NON-floating pier and shows how far down the lake is.

Will apparently got bored. He decided we should move on to Mexico and warmer weather. Mona said she was not up to moving. Of course, Will was outvoted so we stayed in LCC.
But, Will got his revenge. On January 22 (with Mona’s consent, of course) we booked a flight to Toronto for January 25, returning on January 30. It was kept as a total surprise to our family.
Of course THIS is why we traveled….

It is not that we got homesick, it is just that Hannah’s first birthday and Colin’s twice yearly visit to Powassan and crappy weather in south Texas came together.

We went home. We got the 24 hour flu. We had fun. We were ecstatic to spend time with all of our family. We were very glad to get back

Footnote….in the 10 days we are back the weather has broken and become normal..highs in the 20s Celsius most days.