Friday, December 04, 2015

Road Trip to Texas



We were gone 5 weeks and I have a lot of photos. Too many for a blog post. So I will just put up one and if you want to see more, I will sit down with you and we can look at the rest on my phone.

It was an "empty nest" trip. Dave and I have many places we want to see and now that Ray is off to college, we can easily leave town for longer trips. There is a void to fill with the boy gone, and wandering around the West seems as good a strategy as any to make the adjustment. 

A group of friends from college were meeting in California in mid-October for a reunion so that got our trip to Texas onto the calendar. We camped for a few days prior to the meet-up and saw my brother and sister in Reno on the way. Colusa, Carrizo Plain and Dana Point were our main stops in California. We moved on to Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas, all fantastic places to camp and explore. We were mostly down around the Rio Grande river and spent a couple of days in Big Bend National Park. We crossed over to a small Mexican pueblo in a rowboat and rode burros into the village for lunch. That's a good picture - big Dave on a little donkey. 

My father grew up in Hebbronville, Texas, so we found the house his father built and got a tour by a wonderful woman who lives there with her husband. She grew up next door and knew my grandparents when she was a little girl. Alma Martinez, what a sweetheart! She treated us like family and fondly told us stories about these people I never really knew.

Brownsville was our destination and the place we turned toward home. First, though, we had family time for a week with two cousins and an elderly auntie. It was easy to hang out with people we rarely see but family is family. Making the journey wasn't difficult - it is far (Texas is huge) but we had plenty of time and it was well worth the trip.

Ok, since you asked, one more picture, the last one I took - with my brother, Carlos, in Wyoming.


No comments: