Mexico Border, Car Wash and another Walk on a Trail

Location: Falcon State Park; Falcon Heights, Texas

(click pictures to enlarge)

The weather cleared around 10:00 am but the wind continued to howl with gusts in the 20+ mph range. The sky was partly cloudy with patches of blue shining through. 

I drove around the park before heading to Zapata, which is the town located about 25 miles north of here. I was looking for a car wash. Even though I washed Freedom in one of those self-service spraying wand things, some of the dirty grime I picked up at Three Rivers was still hanging on. I found a drive through car wash and for $8.00 it did a pretty good job. There are still places where this is some faint grime still sticking, but it is 90% better than before. I may hit the car wash again when I go to town to fill up with gas before moving day next week. 

On my way back to the park, I drove over to the dam in hopes of getting a better view of the gates and spillway. The border crossing point is located on the U.S. end of the dam so I wasn't able to get a good view. I slowly turned around before getting up to the border guards. I guess if I hadn't been so lazy last Thanksgiving and had gotten my passport like I planned, I could have driven into Mexico. I could have seen the dam at the same time, since the road going to Mexico is on top of the dam. I didn't take any pictures of the border guards because I didn't want to draw any attention to myself. 

I took a walk on another one of the trails in the park. On my way I saw a family of Javelinas on the side of the road. I walked up slowly and took some pictures, but did not get the clarity that I wanted. I didn't have the big camera because it is a pain to carry sometimes. I know someone is going to disagree, but of course, she will be wrong (notice I didn't say a name). I will get a good picture of some javelinas in the future, I'm sure of that. They live in the area I will be passing through for the next month or two. 

There isn't a lot to explore around this area so I'm mainly just kicking back and taking it easy. The evening walks are great with the weather cooperating. I haven't seen any other campers on the trails yet. Some are walking only on the roads. Maybe they know something I don't, but I enjoy seeing the different plants, tracks and stuff along the trail. I did find the other two Geocaches that are in the park. I took a picture of one from a little distance away so you can see how easy they made them at this park. It is still fun to find them and see what stuff is in the box. I signed the log books and left a business card in the box. 

On to some pictures:

This is the boat ramp in the park. You better have enough power under the hood to get you back up that thing. I don't know why they made it so steep since there is plenty of room to lay it down to a more gentle slope. There were only two boat trailers in the parking lot.

There are several places where you can drive right up the edge of the lake. The lake, like so many in this area, is way low due to the drought. 

Looked like some people made their own boat ramps.

That's the border crossing ahead. I put the camera down and was on my best behavior as I slowly turned around and skedaddled. For my Yankee friends, that means I drove away. :)

That is a family of Javelinas on the side of the road. There were at least 3 or 4 little ones and about 5 big ones. After one of the females saw me, she rounded up the little ones and hit the brush. The biggest one stared at me while the others hit the silk, then he went in the brush.

I thought the show was over but then the big one came trotting back out of the brush, went about 200 feet and entered the brush at a different spot. I can only assume the females kicked him out of their hiding place. Shame, shame.

Entrance to the hiking  walking trail. Looks like a nice one, uh?

Not far down the trail you come to a fork. This picture, with the "caution" sign was to the right. I thought long and hard for about 2 seconds and decided to take the left fork.

Along the way, I found the third and final Geocache. I took of picture of it from the trail so you could see how easy they placed them here. They said they did so because it was unsafe to wander too far away from the trail. 

Another "thinking bench". I sat down for a while and it was very quiet. The wind had died down and would gust just every now and then. You could close your eyes and listen for every sound. I could hear several different type of birds singing, something small in brush, probably a jack rabbit. It was nice.

I took this picture of the OLD and YOUNG. It is a gnarly old twisted tree which looks more dead than alive, BUT, you can see new young growth,,,, shoots of life coming out of the old limbs. The continuation of life.

I didn't see any young growth shoots on this tree so I don't think it will be coming back, but it sure had a pretty view when it was alive. 

One Random Thought:
The country of Yemen is being taken over by Iranian backed terrorists. The King of Saudi Arabia died and is being succeeded by his half brother that is 79 years old. ISIS is gobbling up territory in Syria and Iraq while killing everybody who doesn't agree with them. Iran is about to become a nuclear power. The Taliban will be back in power in Afghanistan in a year. Iraq will become a puppet of Iran. Russia still has Crimea and is looking at other places in the Ukraine to take over. This is just a few of the things going on in the world and our president is giving an interview to three people who are popular on YouTube. They asked him questions like, "if you were a superhero, what power would you want". At the same time, he is refusing to meet with the Prime Minister of our biggest ally in the Middle East because he is pissed that the PM was invited by Congress. 
May God help us. 


Ya'll take care of each other. I'll Cya down the road.