Hi all - Dianne here. Not much to write about other than we are FINALLY enjoying some beautiful days here in the Rio Grande Valley. Sunshine, warm, today it will reach the mid 80s. In fact, on Thursday we plan an excursion to the beach at South Padre Island, so stay tuned for an update on that.
On Tuesday we took the dogs on an exploratory hike down the levee
and found our way to the boat launch owned by the developer of our RV park. I guess we are assuming this, because the palapa was the same design as those in the RV park, the area had palm trees and beautiful landscaping. (As we mentioned before, once you leave the environs of our nice park area, the surrounding area leaves a bit to be desired. My Midwest sensibilities do not like graffiti and trash.)
We are scheduled for a kayaking excursion on February 1, weather permitting, so we'll find out for sure if we were there or that we were trespassing on someone else's land!
As we hiked along, we spotted a White-Tailed Kite, an American Kestrel, and an Altimira Oriole, but I did not get a photo of any of them. We also saw what I believe to be a Tropical Kingbird, but I can't be sure of that. (They are spotted here occasionally).
Enough bird-speak.
Our daughter, Robyn, who is definitely NOT a birder, sent me this photo of her and her friend as they drove cross country to help her move to L.A. I thought it was such a funny photo that I wanted to post it. (Apologies to friends and family who I've already e-mailed it to). Be sure to click or double click on this one to see the whole photo; otherwise, it cuts off the ostrich's head which is the funniest part. My daughter is the girl on the left. They had a wonderful time driving cross country, doing kitchy things like stopping at Route 66 museums and the ostrich farm where this photo was taken. So glad she's adventurous!
Not sure how they got the ostrich to pose this way! 
On our way home we had a minor incident with Chaplin. As naive midwesterners, we stopped to look at some unusual (fiery red - should have been a clue) ants along the levee path. Poor Chaplin managed to step right onto the ant hill and I had to brush the ant (I think it was just one) that had grabbed onto his foot and was biting him hard. Poor Chap was in terrible pain, to the point that his back right leg became immobile and Roger, being the good dad that he is, ended up carrying 30 pounds of whippet back to the motor home.
I jumped on the internet to see what to do for it, and we immediately washed his paw with soapy water, massaged it, rinsed it off, then dunked it into a cup of white vinegar. Chaplin is a high-anxiety type dog (if he were human, he'd be on Prozac), and the pain in his paw was sending him into a full-fledged panic attack, panting and trembling. The vinegar helped with the immediate pain and at least he calmed down, but it was about three hours before he would use his leg normally. I guess we still have a lot to learn about hiking our dogs out west or in the deep south; at least we know to avoid fire ants at all cost from now on!
After that bit of excitement we spent the rest of the beautiful day sitting outside in the sun, reading (Roger), Sudoku (me), and before we knew it, it was wine-thirty. An advantage of retirement is that it is really easy to waste an entire beautiful day and enjoy every wasteful minute of it!
One of the reasons we are able to make it mostly on an educator's pension is that
most of the
things we enjoy doing don't cost a dime. While working at Amazon I stowed a book one day "Idiot's Guide to Geocaching," so that day after work I hopped on line and ordered one. We've been wanting to start geocaching and we finally have the time to figure out how to properly use our hand-held GPS (a retirement gift from our wonderful friends Jay and Nancy) and go out and actually try it out on its intended purpose. I've been using it all along to post our location (click on the "where we are today" link above to see it), but what we really wanted a GPS for is geocaching. Hopefully soon we'll be able to post about our new hobby.
As night fell,
Roger took some pretty shots of the setting sun outside our windshield, with our Texas Hill Country grape lights
shining on the dash. Life is good!!
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