Life in a border town

We've finally gotten into a rhythm here and the days seem to be getting shorter and shorter. The saying "time flies when you are having fun" seems so true right now.

We have our own little spot in the RV park near the pool & recreation hall. The girls have a pretty regular schedule of cartoons, cleaning, homework, playing outside, swimming and then movies in the evening. Becky and I have our own routines. Most of the time is pretty relaxed. We all have switched over to sleeping in and staying up late. It stays light outside until very late, but the sun doesn't seem to come up until 7:30-8:00, so there's no reason to get up early.

The pool is very nice. The water is usually warm at around 82-84 degrees. It's wonderful to hit the pool when it's 85+ and humid outside - nice and cool. The palm trees surrounding the pool provide a lot of shade in the afternoon, so we can hang out in the pool and hot tub until our fingers are good and wrinkled.

The weather here is pretty nice. We've only had to put on long pants a couple of times, so most of the time it's shorts, thin shirts or just swimming suits and flip-flops. There is an almost constant breeze off the gulf which is only about 10-15 minutes drive from here, so despite the heat and humidity as long as the air is moving it feels great.

We've been to the Gulf of Mexico a couple of times now. The first visit was on South Padre Island. The sand here is very fine and feels soft and wonderful on your bare feet. I am used to the northern beaches of the Pacific Ocean where the sand is coarse and rocky and the water is relatively cold. Here the water feels like it is in the mid 70's or so... The tourist season is over for the most part, so we have had the beaches almost entirely to ourselves. I hear that it gets crazy again during Spring Break, but we'll likely avoid all of that anyway.

We walked down into Mexico for an afternoon a few days ago. That was an interesting experience... We should have gone with a group of folks that had already been there. I really need to learn some Spanish so I don't feel so out of touch. People were friendly enough and accommodated us despite our obvious discomfort and lack of experience. We were pretty obvious tourists. The biggest difference for me was that there were few sidewalks and you had to dash across the streets in odd places to keep from having to walk right in the road. Cars park wherever they feel like it (including across the sidewalks) and as far as I could tell, no speed limit or other rules of the road were enforced very strictly. I really felt like we had to pay attention at all times to where the cars where or run the risk of getting run over even when on the sidewalk . Right across the border was a bit scary. Lots of folks that made me uncomfortable hanging around at the boarder crossing, but once we got 7-8 blocks down the road, the town seemed a lot nicer. Cute shops and very old looking homes mixed together. You got the feeling that you didn't really need a car there. Everything is mixed together so that there was a shop on every block where you could get the things you need. We of course tried to shop in one of the stores outside the market and quickly found that you must speak Spanish in order to shop at the local stores. Once in the tourist market though, everyone spoke at least some English.

A day at the aquarium

It's early morning and I can't sleep. It's free calling time for cell phone modem, so I thought that I'd post about yesterday's trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and upload some images...

We left the campground for the aquarium at about 9:00 in the morning. Parking was easy to find and since we were a bit early, we went to a little restaurant and had breakfast.

The aquarium is very impressive. It cost us about $80.00 for all 4 of us to visit ($25.00 for adults and $16.00 for kids). We spent about 3 or 4 hours exploring and playing. There were lots of hands on things for the kids to do.

Everyone's favorite exibit was the jellyfish in the drifter's gallery near the outer bay area. There's just something very interesting about the way that jelly fish move and the way the lighting and music in the area immersed you in their world...

The outer bay had some of the biggest fish I have ever seen. I don't know if the glass makes them appear larger or not, but some of those fish looked twice the size of the people watching them. There were a couple of divers in the tank that appared to be working on something - they looked small in comparison to the size of the fish swimming around them too, so I think that the fish were actually that big...

The girls spent quite a bit of time at the touch pools. They really enjoyed being able to touch the little crabs, starfish, sea slugs and a wide variety of plants. There was a glass tunnel nearby that would have a simulated tide surge splash over it. Lots of kids would scream as the water rushed out and over the glass like a big wave hit or something.

All in all we had a good time. Becky and I are still getting over a cold that the kids brought home from school a few days before we left, so we're a bit low on energy...

Today we have many hours of driving to reach Los Angeles. We're staying flexible, but we'd like to be close by late afternoon so we can get an early start on Disneyland tomorrow. If all goes well, I'll be able to post an update tonight.