Del Rio February 6th and 7th, 2010.

Chris surprised me this year for Valentine's Day.  Well, technically it was the weekend before, but it was fun all the same.  We left after work on Friday and drove down to Del Rio, Texas.  Neither of us had been in that area before, but it had some interesting things nearby.  It took me totally by surprise because Chris called me when I was going to pick up Deacon from daycare and told me to not pick him up but drive straight home.  When I got home, no one was there.  A few minutes later Chris comes in and says, "Okay, let's go."  I'm like, "Where's Deacon and Xena?"  He says, "They're at grandma's."  He tells me we are going to go on a hike like we used to every Valentine's Day.  I asked him if I needed to put my sneakers on, and he says, "Oh, they're already packed."  I was very confused.  I asked if I needed to pack any clothes, and he told me he already packed everything.  So we drove 5 hours, and were in a completely different part of the state terrain-wise.  Very scrubby, and very desolate.  I can't imagine sneaking into the U.S. over there, because you'd have to crawl in on your belly to not be seen.  The largest plant/tree was less than waist height.

           

A pier on Amistad Lake.  From this direction, you are looking into Mexico.  Approximately half the lake is in Texas, and half is in Mexico.

   

Amistad Lake is the clearest lake I've seen in some time.  You could easily see the bottom from the shore, and it was the most beautiful turquoise blue color.  I didn't know it was possible for a lake to be this color.

 

 Just thought this was a really cool stretch of road that they carved through the hills.

 

Okay, this was our first experience with Border Patrol.  It was like what you see in the movies pretty much.  Except the border patrol guys all have heavy Mexican accents.  It's hard not to laugh when they ask if you're a U.S. citizen and you can barely understand them.

  

It seemed like every third vehicle we saw on the road was a Border Patrol truck.

  

This is us climbing down into the Seminole Canyon.

 

A really cool old tree stump in the canyon.  Can you see the dragon head?

 

It's hard to make anything out, but there were really really old cave paintings in here.  The dark reds are part of them.  It's been around for about 10,000 years, they say.

 

This was a sport at the Archeolympics.  That's what they called it.  You had to try and get the plastic deer with a really long arrow.  They didn't have a bow, you used something they used back in the hunter-gatherer days.  The comment after the current participant got these three arrows off was, "Great, well, at least now you've got him pinned down."

 

 

This is a early settler's wife of this area.  This is why they say, "Don't mess with Texas."

 

This is a bridge over the Pecos River.  They were doing road construction on it while were there.  The early settlers had a tough time building a bridge long enough to span this river.

 

This is the west side of the Pecos River.

 

Clearly not a law-abiding citizen.

 

Like I said, every third car...

 

We drove through most of the town of Del Rio, and found this interesting fence.  There weren't any structures on the other side that we could see.

 

To give you some idea of the scale of this fence.  Also, it had six padlocks on it.

 

The first time we came across one of these signs, we could not stop laughing.  All ticks, hop off here.

 

Come on, how often do you see a turquoise blue grocery store??  I wasn't able to get the tangerine orange section in the picture.

 

You can't really make it out from this picture, but there was a bunch of cactus growing on these people's carport.

 

It's a real shame, but unfortunately you can't see that the house next to and further back from the one in the forefront is an approximately 8,000 square foot Mediterranean style mansion.  We figured this has to be the greatest difference in real estate values in the U.S. on one street.