Christmas with the kids

We spent a great Christmas week with Nick and Karen, Valerie and Albert, Moose and Kona. Kona was beside himself with joy, having missed the kids and their significant others terribly. However, his favorite was his day long play sessions with Moose. Up til now, Kona has roused in the 5:30 to 6:00 AM range. With Moose here, he has had days when he slept in until nearly 8! Yeah Moose!

Our days with the kids routinely include hitting the beach, and taking in a different local haunt for lunch. Kona and Moose loved the beach as much as we, and reveled with each other. Fresh fish selections, along with views of the water and all the people and boat traffic, made each lunch a new experience.

We took a day and headed down to the mouth of the Rio Grande. Even though where the Rio Grande hits the Atlantic is less than a 5-mile Pelican flight from our coach, to drive there we needed to head West to Brownsville and then back East to the mouth. Along the route we stumbled on Elan Musk’s new launch facility under construction for Spacex. While not open, it was still fun to see where commercial space flight will soon be centered.

We also stumbled upon the last battlefield of the American Civil War.  At Palmito Hill, Confederate forces defeated Union forces, resulting in upwards of 30 Union soldiers killed, 20 of both forces wounded, and over 100, primarily Union forces, captured. The sad thing was that this battle took place over a month after Lee and the Confederacy surrendered. Apparently neither the Union or Confederate forces got the email. Allegedly, in this remote area of Texas, communications were so slow that those in charge of the forces did not know the conflict was over.

Pretty much the only folk at the mouth were Mexicans who were fishing. The Rio Grande was too deep for us to cross, either on foot or by car, but we were literally yards from those folk, and the Mexican homeland. Even though there was not much going on, we enjoyed our visit.

We did get a bit of a bonus. This Reddish Egret was prancing along the Rio Grande just inside the waters of the Gulf. We had seen one at the South Padre Island Birding Center, but not one that decided to perform for us.

Talk to you soon!