Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 - Driving to Laredo and along the Rio Grande.

Being careful to remember to retract the TV antenna and retrieve our new coaxial cable as we packed, we hooked up the trailer and were off by shortly after 9 o'clock. Joining Interstate 35 we headed south to Laredo through the dry, empty south Texas plains. A video on the history of the missions that we had watched in Mission San Jose had mentioned the long-term impact of cattle ranching on the plains. It seems that the endemic overgrazing had shifted the dominant flora from a grassland savanna type of ecology to a brush and cactus type of ecology. That certainly matched with what we saw on our drive to Laredo, which was nothing but brush, shrub trees, and cacti.

We wanted to take the Route 20 bypass around Laredo, but the signs for it were so uninformative that we missed our turnoff completely. Couldn't the Texas Department of Transportation have put something like "This way is west to Mexico!" on one branch of the loop and "This way is east around Laredo!" on the other branch? Instead we were proudly informed that this was Bill Somebody-or-other's loop, which told us exactly zero about what direction each branch was going. We, of course, compounded our initial error by trying to get off at the next exit and head east to intersect the loop, rather than making a U-turn and driving through that confusing intersection one more time to find the correct branch. As it was, we got lost in a series of dead ends in a new subdivision and had to backtrack a couple of miles before Monika finally found a street that would go through to Route 20.

I really dislike maneuvering the rig through narrow suburban streets with cars and kids all over the place, so the complete lack of signs that characterized the part of Laredo we drove through was really aggravating. Still, we finally worked our way to U.S. 83 going south and followed it to the Falcon State Park campground where we stayed the night. One thing that changed noticeably along the way was that south of Laredo the trees and bushes were already getting new leaves. It appeared that by continuing to drive south in January we had finally reached "spring" at the southern tip of Texas. The green tinge was a welcome change from the unrelieved shades of brown that had characterized our trip up to that point, and it reminded me of the the same early spring we had found in south Florida during Wanderung 1.

On our way south along the Rio Grande, I was puzzled by seeing camping trailers located at the gates to each of the ranches on the side of the road. Some had special lights set up and I was curious what that was all about. Were they trying to protect something or just prevent illegal immigrants, drug smugglers, or rustlers from crossing their land? I really don't know but we saw at least 10 to 15 of those set-ups. After reaching Falcon State Park and setting up camp we took a short walkabout to look at the lake. The fairly large man-made lake next to the park was formed by damming the Rio Grande, and as usual we found folks fishing along the shore as well as from some boats out in the lake. Ah, if only we had brought along Mutt and Jeff, we could have ventured out ourselves.

We saw some unusual birds that only exist in Texas or more generally the South. First there was the Vermilion Flycatcher, a brilliantly red bird. Since the only bright red bird I know is a cardinal, I was confused when I saw it. But I became even more confused when I saw something that had the right shape and "cheep" of a cardinal, but was mostly grey with just a tinge of red. Monika consulted a bird book and found out that Texas has close cousin to our northern cardinal called the Grey Cardinal. Both male and Females are grey and have a yellow beak. Pretty, but different.

As the sun set we crept into the trailer for the evening, had dinner, and then for the rest of the evening read our books by the modern version of candlelight, batter powered fluorescent lanterns!