Birds & Butterflies

We arrived a day early in Mission, Texas on Thurs, Oct 24^th. We are spending two weeks visiting Julie’s sister Cindy and brother-in-law Terry, at the 2,600 acre Bentsen Palm Development, a development on the edge of Mission. We stayed in Retama Village, which has a mix of single family homes, RV port homes, and RV lots with large concrete pads and a casita (one of which we rented from the lot owners who live in Minnesota).   

 

The Mission area is where many “Winter Texans” head to for the winter months with their RVs or to their winter homes here in south Texas. Mission, adjacent to McAllen, is in the Rio Grande Valley and there are several wildlife refuges. Hundreds of different bird species and nearly 300 of 500 butterfly species migrate through the area. We especially enjoyed riding our bicycles to the “World Birding Center Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park” (the top birding sight in the U.S.), about three blocks from our RV site, to see many different species of birds and butterflies.

Green jay

Golden-fronted woodpecker

Great kiskadee

Queen butterflies

Last Sunday, we drove to Port Isabel for their annual World's Championship Shrimp Cook-Off festival, where we enjoyed sampling the various shrimp dishes.  Then we drove across the bridge to South Padre Island to see the gulf and enjoy a drink at a beach side bar.

We joined Cindy and Terry in celebrating their 9^th anniversary last night at dinner.

We leave here tomorrow morning and start working our way east to Florida, where we plan to spend much of our winter in Key West.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Viva Las Vegas

We left Albuquerque on Sunday, Oct 13^th and arrived in Las Vegas on Mon, Oct 14^th after an overnight stay at Meteor Crater RV Park, Arizona, the half-way point, and one of our favorite RV parks.

We spent the week at the Oasis RV Resort on the south side of Las Vegas.

On Wed, we went to the musical Jersey Boys, at The Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino, about the story behind the music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. It was very, very good and we’d recommend it to anyone our age that grew up in the 60s and 70s.

On Fri night, we went for dinner in Margaritaville, in the Flamingo hotel, because we’d heard that Jimmy Buffet sometimes shows up for an impromptu performance when he’s in town. We didn’t see him though.

 

We had tickets for his concert on Saturday night at the MGM Grand and took in the pre-concert pool party at the Flamingo. It was our first Jimmy Buffett concert and we had heard a lot about his fans (called parrot heads). We thought we saw Jimmy Buffett, but it was a fan dressed up like him. 

 

The Jimmy Buffett concert was amazing and we really had a good time on Sat night. We left Las Vegas on Sun morning and headed across Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, towards Mission, Texas (near McAllen) to spend a few weeks visiting Julie’s sister Cindy and brother-in-law Terry, who manages a RV resort there. We’re really looking forward to two weeks of hanging out and relaxing after the 1,500 mile drive from Las Vegas.    

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

We arrived at the Balloon Fiesta RV grounds on Wed, Oct 9^th for four nights. Julie’s Mom drove down from Colorado Springs to see the Balloon Fiesta and stayed with us in our motorhome. Our friends Kris & Jan, their daughter Stacy and son-in-law Brett, my sister Marcia, brother-in-law Mike, and their friends Bob & Joanne from Tucson all got together to see the balloon launches, evening glows, and fireworks.

We all enjoyed the balloon festival and getting together in the evenings for happy hour, dinner and conversation. Next, we head to Las Vegas for a week. We've got tickets for a Jimmy Buffet concert on Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

 

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Breaking Blog – Albuquerque

We arrived at Pueblo State Park on Monday, Sept 23^rd for 4 nights. We got our boat winterized at Rocky Mountain Boats and took care of a few other things before heading to Westcliffe on Friday afternoon. We spent a really nice weekend with our friends Vince & Lisa and put the boat away for the winter.

On Monday, Sept 30^th, we headed south to Albuquerque. We went to Kirtland AFB to the FamCamp but they were full and had campers waiting for a spot in their dry camping area. Most of the campers were there for the Balloon Fiesta, which began on Saturday, Oct 5^th. We wanted a full hook-up, since we were staying for 9 nights before we headed to the Balloon Fiesta RV grounds. We stayed at Isleta Lakes RV Park on the south edge of Albuquerque.

We met our friends Kris & Jan for dinner during the week and invited them out to our motorhome to watch the Broncos-Cowboys football game on Sunday. It was a close, but good game.

Kris & Jan are big fans of the TV program Breaking Bad, which was filmed entirely in Albuquerque. The TV series has won many Emmy awards over the six seasons it was on the air. Julie and I missed watching Breaking Bad on AMC, so we purchased the first 5 seasons to watch it. We watched all of the first and second season and 11 of 13 episodes of the third season in a week. Kris & Jan took us around Albuquerque to see where much of the filming was done and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing those places from what we had seen so far in the TV series. Maybe you’ll recognize them too.

Julie’s Mom is driving down from Colorado Springs to see the Balloon Festival with us. She has never been to the Festival and we’re looking forward to her visit.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Lake Powell – Page, Arizona

We left Lake Navajo and headed to Page, AZ and Lake Powell on Sunday, Sept 8^th for a two-week stay. My sister Marcia and brother-in-law Mike joined us and we also met our friends from Albuquerque, Kris and Jan. We all arrived at the same time and picked out our campsites in Wahweap Campground.

 

Our friend Wendy flew in from Colorado on Tuesday and spent five days with us. The first few days of the week it rained off and on, hard enough to cause minor flooding and close the main entrance road to the park. It finally cleared off and we went to Antelope Canyon, just outside of Page, on Friday.

 

 

On Saturday, Sept 14^th, we took our boat and went 42 miles up lake to Dangling Rope marina where enjoyed ice cream and great views of the lake.

 On the way back, we spotted this guy at Antelope Point marina enjoying himself with a water-powered jet backpack.

We celebrated my 65^th birthday at Fiesta Mexicana with dinner and a surprise dessert.

On Monday, Sept 16^th, we went on a guided fishing trip. We met the guide at 6AM and the sun was just coming up. We caught stripers, small mouth bass, and a couple of catfish. Our guide picked out the fish to keep and we threw about 20 back into the lake.

 

Tuesday, I went water skiing, an annual ritual to celebrate my birthday. Later that week, we got some great photos of the harvest moon.

My sister Janet, her wife Nancy, and their friend Shirley arrived on Friday for a 2-night visit. Janet and Nancy had hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back earlier in the week.

We left Lake Powell on Sunday, Sept 22^nd, and headed back to Colorado to get our boat winterized and put away until next year.

Steve & Julie Cornelius