“Shivers to Sunburn”

The people around here must be really put-off with us.  When we arrived one week ago the weather was a beautiful, sunny 8O degrees Fahrenheit.  This past week the daytime high temperatures were around 46 degrees while the lows approached the freezing mark of 32 degrees Fahrenheit.  The bad weather seemed to be following us, as we headed south and seemed to catch up with us last week.  We spent most of our time in the trailer shivering with the heat on.  We went through a full tank of propane in that week, where during a regular season that is ALL that we would use.  Then on Sunday, the weather broke and we were able to finally get over to the park for a bike ride and we were also finally able to get the trailer washed.  We have had a couple of nice days back to back which is nice.

We found out that the Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State park had just re-opened in the last week or so.  Apparently, last June or July a dam was opened somewhere on the Mexican side of the border, unbeknownst to the Americans.  It caused considerable damage to the park infrastructure and it had been mostly closed since then.  On our bike ride we could see one of the “resacas” (an oxbow lake, as it is known to most Canadians) was still full compared to when we had seen it last year.  Many of the farms adjoining the Rio Grande, on both sides of the border where wiped out due to the flooding.  They found a single bob-cat as a casualty of the floods in the park.

As I sit outside, I can see a Border Patrol helicopter patrolling the length of the levee separating us from the park and the Rio Grande river less than a mile away.  We attended a session last Tuesday with a representative from the US Border Patrol.  The Mexican drug cartels have been busy trying to smuggle illegal drugs into the US.  They are quite creative in how they try to get the drugs over the border.  One picture showed a semi-trailer of sod, with an area hollowed out in the center holding thousands of pounds of marijuana.  Another picture showed palm tree where the root ball had been cut out to stash the dope.

The temperature topped out at 88 degrees here today.  We had read the news report today and Thompson, MB (where David is currently doing his current stint with Hydro) was a bone chilling –37C with a wind chill of –44C.  (Thompson was tied with Hall Beach, Nunavut Territory for the coldest place on the planet!)  Meanwhile, Kevin had to celebrate his 24th. birthday alone in Winnipeg, where we understand it was only –33C this morning.  Guess I can’t complain about a little sunburn!