Saturday March 10, 2018-Cottonwood RV Park

No, I haven't suffered a breakdown or died, but we have been steadily busy. Far too busy to keep up with this daily record of what we have done. I envy those that Do keep up with their own blogs, but I couldn't do it. We start the rally season tomorrow, so we'll be traveling again and I'll do better.

The first thing I did was finish up with my dental work. If you remember, I was supposed to have come down here back in the summer to have my final work done, but my eyes broke and I had to get them taken care of and had to change my plans. 

The work that I had done was really pretty simple. They took a new impression of my mouth and made me a complete new set of teeth. This one fits much better and will be my final set, I hope...  This procedure took about four trips over to Progresso Mx. to get completed, but it's so much less expensive there than in the states, it worth it!

We ate out a lot-probably too much, but we had fun and ate lots of the local cuisine. We also ate at some of our favorite chain restaurants, Cheddar's, Cracker Barrel and took Stella to the Salt Grass Steakhouse for her birthday on February 27th. Just for the record, she's older than me again...

We've found several local eateries that are on our list of favorites now, Gonzales Burgers, has been for awhile, a new burger place called The Ranch House; they have an amazing menu of sandwiches and Mexican food(of course), Martha's Family Tacqueria, another long-time favorite; Bubba's, a local favorite watering hole with delicious sandwiches and a pizza special one night a week, NaNa's Tacqueria in Weslaco, a small Mexican restaurant that is popular when returning from old Mexico, Stella and I ate in Mexico at Rene's Tacqueria; we found a great Mexican restaurant, the Casa Del Marisco in Weslaco that Dave and Nancy had found on their summer trip down here. They have some of the best Mexican food that we have had down here! We ate breakfast with our park resident group at Rosie's Restaurant in Mission and found another breakfast restaurant called the Diaz Diner, also in Mission. Both had excellent food with a definite Mexican attitude. As you can see, we ate a wide variety of food but mostly Mexican. We are in the Rio Grande Valley, after all and only a couple of miles from the border where we are staying.

Our friends Tommy and Susan came down for a week or so and brought some friends and acquaintances with them that we know, Les and Terri. We had a nice time with them and introduced them to the Ropas shopping experience. If I haven't told you about the Ropas, or have forgotten about them, they are a very interesting store. There are Ropas Usadas (used clothing) and Ropas Nuevo (new clothing). They are collected by various means and sold either by the piece at a very heavily discounted price or sold for 20-30 cents a pound for theused clothes. When you can buy a pile of clothes for 2-3 dollars, it's hard to beat!We know people that buy some very nice pieces there, but it's luck to find something. The stores bring huge bales of clothes out with a forklift and the "regulars", Mexican women, fly onto the new items, seeking put sizes and colors of the clothes they are seeking. Interesting but not my cup of tea, but fun to watch.

I told you about buying a Hum unit for the truck. It saved us from having a problem later on the road. We have had a check engine light on for a long time and no one could tell me what the problem was until now. The Hum revealed a second code for low fuel rail pressure, so I took it to Payne Dodge to be checked out. Our Service Advisor, Carlos, took good care of us. A technician checked on the two  CEL's and found that the low fuel pressure had reset itself, possibly trash in the fuel, or some other ailment that went away, but the other light was for a catalytic converter problem with the actual catalyst material needing to be replaced. This is part of the government-forced emissions equipment, so I had a choice to replace it at the Dodge dealer and keep it legal or take to a place called Spike Performance in nearby Pharr Tx. and have all the emissions equipment deleted and removed. This would have made the truck illegal to get rid of-no dealer would take it in that condition-and worse-yet, if stopped by the police, it could result in the truck being red-tagged until the emissions equipment was replaced and a very high fine imposed. I chose to have Payne Motors do the work and they furnished us with a very nice little Dodge Journey to drive while the truck was being repaired. There was a foul-up with the needed parts and it took a few days for the repairs to be made, but we picked it up on a Friday but didn't make it home before the CEL came back on with the same code. I called Carlos and took the truck back on Monday. We got the same Journey back to drive and they replaced a few more parts and the truck runs like a new one now, and no more check engine lights! It was expensive, but we feel more confident now that the truck will be dependable and should last us a long time (knock on wood).
We visited with old friends Mike and Linda, who just bought a mobile home that is set in a very nice park in Mercedes Tx. We met the while we all park-hosted at Inks Lake a few years ago. It was good to catch up with them and we had a nice visit.

I have been walking 2-3 miles a day here and really enjoying it. I walked over to Retama Village one day and ran into Ted and Donna and had a nice chat with them. We have been so busy, as they are too, and haven't had a chance to spend any time with them, but we'll all be back next season.

We went to a performance of the group Southern Anthem at the Green Gate Grove RV Park, near our park. This is a small family group that does country, bluegrass and gospel music and they are very talented. We went to two performances in our own park, one by Dale and Gayle that put on a pretty good show. They were a bit hokey, but it was a donation-only performance, so it was pretty good. The other performance was by Norma Gonzales, doing a Patsy Cline show. She, unfortunately, had some problems with remembering the words to the songs, seemed to be bothered by the heat (felt pretty comfortable to me, but I wasn't singing) and had a major malfunction with her wig, which came off. Actually, it just got loose and she took it off, but it was a pretty pitiful performance, another donation-only show. 

We have had a great time with our Heartland friends that are here in the valley with us. We formed a Facebook group so that we could communicate and plan get-togethers and have had a lot of fun. We will see them later in the rally season at some upcoming rallies.

It has been another good time in the valley, although the weather didn't cooperate for the first month-six weeks. It snowed on us the day we arrived and was cold and dreary for a long time. It has warmed up nicely in the past couple of weeks and actually reached 88 today!

We leave in the morning for Abilene and the West Texas chapter rally. It should be a fun time and we are looking forward to the rally season.

So long.