Monday January 15 and 16th, 2018-Moving days-Bay Colony to Cottonwood RV Park, Mission TX

We left cold Dickinson this morning to what we hoped would be warmer temperatures in Mission. We got bad information (go figure!) from the weather-guessers on television about the expected weather this morning. We were told that temps would still be in the 30's and when we woke, it seemed that cold, so we didn't get in a hurry to pack up and leave. There was not that much to do and we didn't get started until after 8, but when I went out, expecting cold, I was pleasantly surprised at the warmer weather. I had also worried about the traffic in Houston and wanted to delay our leaving to give the morning rush to finish. I didn't think about it being a holiday (Martin Luther King) which had eliminated some of the traffic, so with our getting started later, we had no problems with traveling through Houston. We breezed right on through without even a slowdown.

We made the mandatory stop at Buc-ee's in Wharton for a bite of breakfast as well as a pit stop in the "cleanest rest rooms in the world". It was only a few miles to our overnight stop in Victoria at the Gateway to the Gulf RV park. For some reason, we were both tired and after a quick set-up, we were both napping in our theater seats. We ate a quick supper and were again down for the count. It started raining and got much colder during the night, so when I went outside to begin preparing to leave, I was surprised to find sleet falling and ice covering the drivers side of the truck and trailer. The wind was blowing hard, making it miserable to be outside, so I completed my job and went back inside to decide what we were going to do. We knew the park was supposed to fill up tonite, so since the ice wasn't sticking to the pavement, we decided to go for it and push on to Mission.

It continued to rain/sleet on us and the temps never went about about 33* on our way down. So much for warmer weather in the Rio Grand Valley! We took the suggested (Garmin) route of a shortcut to US 281 to go into Mission. I was surprised to find the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint (southbound) was closed. The northbound side was open for business but everything on the southbound side was gone. I guess they finally figured out that the illegal aliens are going INTO the United States, not back into Mexico.

The rain had tapered off into on again/off again, but when we got to Cottonwood, it began to snow! How crazy is this? After dodging around some orange and tangerine trees, we finally got backed in. It seems much easier to get set up but the only difference is that I don't have to set up the satellite dish now but it does seem to go faster.

I told you it had been cold on the way down. To demonstrate, it was 47* inside the trailer when we went in and set up ALL the heaters and furnace! it didn't take long for the temp to come back up and we could thaw out. There wasn't much visiting with our friends that are already here, but we will start catching up with them soon.

Later in the afternoon, after the snow stopped falling (not sticking, we drove over to Martha's restaurant in Donna. This has been one of our favorite restaurants since we first came down here in 2009. We had stayed next door at the Casa Del Sol on our very first trip to the Valley. Good times...

It's good to be here with friends and many things to do.

So long.