The Rio Grande Valley

As we are driving down through  Texas, to South Padre Island, 

everyone is asking us if we are headed to the "Valley", 

I didn't think we looked like "Valley girl's",

Cindy is  from the Livermore Valley and is truly a valley girl, 

but what they meant was, 
were we snowbirds, heading to the Rio Grande Valley to winter

Brownsville is the hub of the valley, 
and also the most southern point you can go to in the 

United States,
I thought Key West was they even have a sign saying it,
but no, it is here and this was the only Southmost sign I could find

The last battle of the Civil War was fought here, the Confederates used Brownsville to ship cotton to Europe, and they didn't get the news that Lee surrendered and were fighting a month afterward

You can't get to the port, but from the road you can see many shrimp boats, and freighters, Brownsville is right where the Gulf ends and Mexico and the United States come together at the Rio Grande

Railroad cars come out of the port, looks like a very busy port from the road

There are 3 border crossings into Mexico from the Rio Valley, this one is in down town Brownsville

 There are about 10 smaller cities making up the Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville being the largest, strip mall after strip mall, easily takes care of the over 500 RV parks in the area, but they also have this cute downtown area, right by the Mexican border, in fact most of the signs are in Spanish

We follow the Rio Grande River, the derogative term "wetback" came from the Mexicans swimming across the Rio, now days, at Brownsville there is so little water in the Rio that one could walk across it

As we followed the road we ran in to this sign and had to turn around, must be too close to the border

When we turned around we saw this fence, now why would anyone build a fence that tall, 18 feet tall, sunk in two feet of concrete, and steel mesh, but no gate, anyone could walk around it

As we followed the Rio we saw more of the fence, 2.4 billion dollars worth of fence, but I guess they never got around to getting the gates

After a few hours of driving up the Rio we came to the second border crossing, not much between the two, few houses lots of fields

I've heard that alot of our manufacturing plants are behind these borders in Mexico, Hotpoint, GM, and many more, but we didn't see any of that being Sunday and all

Thought this was funny, the first thing you see when you come in to the United States, 

Drive Friendly - The Texas Way

We decide to head back to South Padre Island, and drive through the north side of the Rio Valley, here is the first of the 500 or so RV parks, you don't see them all over the place, like in Yuma, because the area is so much bigger

Freddy Fender grew up in San Benito, who would have guessed it.

We get back home to our little bitty island, we are all tired, it's 95 degrees and very humid, maybe I can understand why there are no people here, it's hot!  We will be winding our way out of this valley, we are 800 miles a way from El Paso, where we hook into Highway 10 and start our way west, we will blog when we get a chance but it doesn't look like much is out there between here and there.