The Travels of the Agnew Family

Our friend Cheryl finally made it to the valley arriving yesterday. We decided to have a cook out in her honor. John and Ed smoked some pork tenderloin and barbecued flank steak and sweet Italian sausages.


Fetched some tables and chairs from the rec hall and set everything up. Then the rain came .... so much for the weatherman and his prediction of no rain.


Packed everything up and moved to Cheryl's covered driveway. So much for being organized ahead of time. The sun started poking it's head out as we started to eat. Lunch was very yummy, everyone brought something very tasty.


Let the games begin. After everything was cleaned up we moved back to our trailer to enjoy the rest of the warm sunny afternoon visiting and playing bean bag toss.


Good throw Linda!


Chilling in mom's sunglasses

Another beautiful south Texas day, another afternoon of geocaching. This time we ended up in downtown Mission, more or less. The most noteworthy cache was the one that took us to the back of the police station ---- not my favorite place to be prowling around. Found the perfect spot for the cache but no cache. Ed finally checked to see if other people had found it ---- lots of sad faces (not founds) and comments indicating the cache was missing in action. After this Ed made sure the cache had been found before we spent time searching.


Close to the RV park is this little oasis --- it would be very pretty if it wasn't used as a repository for old concrete,


There's a tiny parkette outside of the history museum where we found some industrious ants. A video would have done a better job to show the ants marching back to their nest carrying leaves. The leaf in the hole is being carried by an ant and if you look closely you will see a few ants in the photo.


Behind the library and across the alley we found this "sculpture" ... or it is really just garage stacked in the back yard.


A beautiful golf course backs onto the recreation center. Between them is an irrigation ditch ... well some kind of ditch. Was the sofa placed here so the birds would have a comfortable place to rest or was someone too lazy to take the couch to the dump?

Another feature of geocaching --- it takes you to interesting areas that you would never otherwise see.

If I could write poetry I would write "Ode to Hydrogen Peroxide". Peroxide doesn't hurt too much when you put it on a cut, it's fun (in a perverse way) to watch peroxide bubble and the best part is Peroxide speeds up the healing time. My finger still has a way to go before it's back to normal but it's looking better. I'm looking forward to the day when I can use my ring finger to type "s", "w" and "x" again --- for now my pinky finger is doing double duty.

In my mind at least. This afternoon our friends Bob and Jean showed the slide show of their cruise to Alaska as well as a merged show of their trips to Alaska in 2007 and 2009. It was a very good show and brought back memories of our trip to Alaska in 2005. I always get itchy feet when I see these show.

Today is Mission's Citrus Parade, part of the citrus festival. There are carnival rides, a smoking contest (meat that is), musicians in the park, food and other vendors and of course the parade. Last year you were able to buy food from some of the people smoking meat for the contest, this year we were disappointed to find out that smokers were not selling any food. We had a really good day. Ed took two hundred and eighty photos, most of which were very good but I managed to whittle it down to less than thirty. The parade was really long --- an hour and a half. It would have been closer to an hour if the non-decorated commercial vehicles were eliminated from the parade. I can understand why elected officals wanted to be in the parade but three undecorated vehicles from a lawyers office. Think there were at twenty or thirty such vehicles in the parade. Many spectators left before the end of the parade and missed what I thought were some of the best bands, marching groups and floats.


One of the fellows smoking for the contest.


Ed and John talked to one of the guys smoking and were offered fajitas which they happily accepted.


This park in Mission has an amphitheater built into the ground. The gazebo at the far end housed the band.


Carol and I found a pieced of curb and sat down to enjoy the parade. The couple beside me are from Winnipeg. They noticed the Canadian flag pin on my hat and started talking to us. Had lots of time to talk to them as it took the parade an hour to reach our location. Next time we're going to sit closer the start of the parade.


Finally the start of the parade.


Bentsen Grove RV park's float --- this is where the people from Winnipeg stay.







I think it would be fun to ride one of these bikes.












Finally the Oleander Acres float. Judy and crew did a great job decorating. JJ (the dog) was walking in the parade but got tired and had to be carried by time they reached us.


One of the many citrus princesses.












John and Ed were standing in the road half the time as they took their photos. I think a number of the parade participants thought John and Ed were from newspapers and posed for them as this girl did.


Another group of students having a good time. The guys were doing flips as they went down the road.


Zero radius turn tractors. Not sure why they were in the parade but they were having fun.


Carol and I decided that uniforms improved the marching ability of the band.


The Shriners love driving their cars --- wonder how many people to takes to get these guys out of the cars after they been sitting in them for two hours.


I love watching these horses, they almost dance.


The parade is over and clean up crew begins their work.

Today is the park Arts and Craft Show. I helped out by being a "greeter" --- hope I can use it on my resume if I ever need a job at Wal-Mart. My job was to show the exhibitors to the table where their craft or work of art will be shown. There's a reasonable number of people who exhibit though there are many more who could. It's lots of fun to look at the items that have been exhibited.

Now for the oops'es. First oops --- I was riding my bike over to a friends RV and when I was stopping my bike somehow managed to fall off of it. Ended up rolling on the ground. Luckily, the only thing I hurt was my pride. Second oops --- leaving my friends RV, I got on my bike and almost fell off again. This time I saved myself but managed to get grease from the chain on my leg. Still don't know how I did that one. Third and thankfully last oops. I sliced a small piece off the end of my ring finger while I was cleaning garlic ---- think maybe I should stop buying fresh garlic and buy the pre-chopped stuff. Lots of blood and now some pain. I can still type but it's a bit slower when I need to use the S, W and X keys. Wonder how long I can milk this injury?

Learned a new card game tonight. Nickel Rummy. A lot of fun and I only lost 30 cents.

The group we hang around with decided to go to the movies this morning. At 11:45 am you pretty much get the theater to yourselves --- think there were 11 of us and 5 others in the movie I went to see. The ladies went to see Joyful Noise with Dolly Parton and Queen Latifa. The guys went to see Red Tails. Ed said Red Tails was really good with lots of special effects, Joyful Noise was a cute, happy ending movie that had some great lines.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent outdoors at the park enjoying the beautiful day --- sunny and eighty.

Sugar cane is grown in our area and it alway draws attention when it is burned. Ed was outside talking to the neighbors when someone noticed a lot of smoke in the sky --- someone was burning cane.

Ed grabbed the camera and walked to the edge of the RV park and managed to shoot some photos of the cane burning even though the field was at least a mile away.


The smoke cloud. The black specks are red wing blackbirds that are still hanging around the now ex corn field.


A tractor drives along the edge of the field with a blow torch and starts the fire.


The flames shoot high into the sky.

Tonight is fun night. Some brave people from the park get on the stage and try to make the rest of us laugh and tonight they were very successful. Thanks for the photos Jim --- we forgot to take a camera with us.


When Ed's name was called to go up on the stage he was a little more than shocked. Five guys were called up and given the simple instruction that they were to move right one chair when the MC said right and to move one chair to the left when the MC said left. The MC then proceeded to read a Christmas story about the "Wright" family. Only a few collisions and a couple of times more than one guy tried to sit on a the same chair.


This lovely lady is turning 100 this year. She told us some wonderful stories. She doesn't drive down here but still drives at home.


Four people were given the task of building snowmen. The pair on the left came up with a pretty good looking snow woman. The pair on the right came up with a snowman from the Black Lagoon. The cushions tied around the "snowman's" waist kept falling down.


The audience had a great time.

The most excitement planned for today was laundry and giving Zaph a bath.

About lunch time, the quiet of a Sunday afternoon was interrupted by shouts and running people. The border patrol were chasing some illegals through the park. One illegal ran by John and Carol's trailer and was almost tripped by Caity's rope. He was captured by our trailer. Ed had his camera out as he was taking some bird photos.






Ed and John talked to the border patrol guy and he said the border patrol was after a group of about 20 illegals. Only a couple of the illegals had run into our park.

Late in the afternoon, John spotted a couple of guys walking along the edge of the park and a few minutes later the border patrol helicopter was flying overhead and a border patrol truck was in the park. The illegals were apprehended.

Just the other day I had comments that I knew illegals went through the park but that I had not seen any personally. Guess that's not true anymore.

Ever since the corn was cut there are a lot of birds in and around our park and it was time to take some photos.