Our rig is parked below a Texas Ebony Tree in the campground of Falcon State Park in southern Texas.  This weekend has brought a crowd of mostly fisher families to enjoy the grand reservoir above the Falcon Dam.  The old town of Falcon is long submerged along the old banks of the Rio Grande River.  The new town of Falcon is a bit east of here.  It has never recovered from its relocation.

We leave Mission this morning.  Once a sleepy town on the Mexican border, Mission is now part of the popular Lower Rio Grande Valley.  This includes walled and well watered communities that are similar to gated communities in southwest Florida, shack communities of recent immigrants, vast farms where the corn is now in some places a foot tall, grazing lands, salt scrub, and a miles long commercial strip along US Route 83.    Between Brownsville and Mission there  are about five miles between each Walmart.

We’re in a large RV park that reminds us of the Siesta Bay Resort near Fort Myers.  Palms, flowers, and noisy blackbirds grace the grounds.  The temperature is now 74 degrees and a fresh breeze feels cool.  We have been exploring woodlands, marshes, and scrublands of the lower Rio Grande Valley and enjoying the associated subtropical flora and fauna. 

We’re within the boundaries of the famous King Ranch though not on ranch-owned land.  That is now in parcels but the ranch continues to be larger than the state of Rhode Island.  Today cattle are only a part of the business.  Remember the movie Giant?  Oil and gas are a big part of the business.  Today half of the land produces sorghum and cotton.  Tourism also provides big dollars.  We bought a birding tour and hunters pay thousands of dollars to sport here where the game is managed to insure abundance and large racks.

I write here after a long pause.  I came to think nobody was looking at these blogs.  But, the suggestion was made that I resume posting.  So, here goes.

We finished our holiday duties and I completed manufacture of a dining room table for the Eisenburgs of Brooklyn.  Anne and I made another trek to visit the kids and see our grandson.  Then we returned home and prepared and provisioned the motorhome while the winter weather held off for a bit longer.  Thanks, I guess,  to this year’s El Nino.

Our wanderings took us across the southern Appalachians to this point.  We enjoyed our visit to Cherokee finding old friends and the Smoky Mountains.  Anne and I completed a stiff climb of the Shining Rock ridge to collect blue berries and enjoy the views.  Glad we can still do it.

The town of Cherokee and that of Sylva too are looking prosperous.  We dined in the later with friends and listened to a band make music at the town park. 

Arrived here at the Tuckaseegee RV Resort between Sylva and Cherokee NC this afternoon to vist old haunts and meet with old friends over the next week.  The mountains look green and the river below our camp is one that Anne and I have paddled several times.  Its rocks have torn a few junks out of the seal coat over the teflon fabric of the craft.

It has been a long time since we have been on the road with our Winnebago Minnie.  Today finds us at this West Virginia State Park within the strange Canaan Valley, a three thousand foot high bowl along the Allegheny Mountains.  Its isolation within a rim of mountains and the altitude make it a “four-season playground.”  The damming of its drainage crates a maize of open bogs and rocky meadows between spruce and fir woodlands and small forests of northern red oak, beech, and red maple.  Deer are too abundant and the boreal parkland provides habitat to various

Our roles in life change continuously.  Sometimes it seems we engage in various lives during our reign of mortality.  Anne and I became grandparents on April 9 with the arrival of Roman in this town late that evening.  I neglected to post anything here during our long wait on the mountain for news (Roman arrived almost two weeks late) in part because all seemed so pre-climactic.