Thursday, December 2nd we headed northwest to Livingston TX to the Escapees Rainbows End RV Park and national headquarters. We will stay here at least a week and get our mail and tour the headquarters and surrounding area. After that we will go south into the Rio Grande Valley and see what that’s like.

While at Rainbows End we toured the national headquarters, the mail forwarding service and the Escapees Care Center. The care center is a nice benefit, where ailing members can stay in their RV and have meals and day care at the center.

We had a very enjoyable stay at Rainbows End. There were the 4 pm get togethers, ice cream socials etc. Sandy also got involved in their line dancing classes.

On Monday December 13th we headed south stopping at Victoria Texas for the night. Tuesday we moved on south and out to the gulf and stayed at Rockport Texas, just north of Corpus Christi at a nice coast to coast park.

While at Rockport we visited some wildlife viewing areas along the coast one day and the next day we went down to Corpus Christi and toured the old 2nd world war vintage aircraft carrier ”Lexington” which is moored there as a museum. This is really an interesting display with about twenty-five planes on the decks to make it very realistic.

Thursday December 16th we left Rockport and headed south to Kingsville and the King Ranch. We took a tour of the ranch which comprises 835,000 acres or larger than the state of Rhode Island. The ranch was founded by William King about one hundred and fifty years ago when he purchased 30,000 acres for 2 cents an acre. It has grown to its present size which includes four divisions: cattle and quarter horses, farming, gas and oil holdings and commercial hunting. They also have citrus and sugar cane operations in Florida. It is now a family controlled corporation. This was a really interesting tour.

We spent so much time at the ranch that we decided to spend the night close by at Riviera TX right on the Gulf of Mexico at Seawind Resort.

Friday the 17th we moved on to Harlingen TX at Park Place Resort. This is a real nice park with lots of activities and close to the valley attractions including South Padre Island and Mexico.

Saturday morning we went to the park clubhouse for a pan cake breakfast and while talking to some people at our table a man asked where we were from and I said Montoursville, PA and he said his wife grew up in Montoursville. It turned out to be Donna Phillips who graduated from MHS one year before me. We had a nice visit with Donna and her husband John Maygar. Later in the morning we took a ride down to Brownsville and returned to Harlingen by way of the Rio Grande River which was a nice ride through truck farming, sugar cane and citrus country.

Monday the 20th John and Donna asked if we wanted to go with them over to Progreso, Mexico. We jumped at the invitation and had a great day shopping and browsing through all the sidewalk stands and shops on the main street of Progreso.

We had a nice lunch in one of the restaurants in town, which was very good and our first real authentic Mexican food. It was a very educational and enjoyable day.

Tuesday Sandy and I drove out to South Padre Island and walked on the beach for a while. This is a real nice beach and I don’t think I have ever seen a beach with so many sea shells lying on the beach. South Padre is very nice and clean and we were surprised that they were not real crowded. This was another nice drive.

We have decided to stay here at Park Place for Christmas. The park puts on a nice dinner on Christmas day and it will be nice to have dinner here and Sandy won’t have to cook.