As I mentioned in the last post we did not plan to walk or ride our bicycles this morning, because we are headed to Victoria Palms (VP) with Dennis and Pam to have breakfast. This is the first thing Dennis and Pam introduced us to after we arrived. We loved it enough we wanted to get in one last visit before we leave. The chef at VP makes the omelettes to order as you watch, and next to it is a waffle station. I loved the previous omelette so I was back for another one! Dean chose an omelette for this visit, as well as a large waffle that he shared with me. It was nice and light and almost as good as the omelette. A breakfast bar provides several other breakfast options.
Many of the resorts down here have various clubs and/or crafts there guests/owners can participate in. One that seems to be very popular by many men and women are the woodworking and carving classes provided. Here are a few pictures of some of the wood carving exhibits on display at Victoria Palms.
From Victoria Palms we took a side road down to Business 83, where Don-Wes Flea Market is held, as well as a fruit/vegetable "stand" that we visited before. I bought a green pepper, a bag of large (5) sweet carrots, 3 sweet oranges and a pineapple. Before we leave in a couple of weeks I plan to make another stop here to pick up several vegetables. Once we are back on the road I will be cooking most days and I know we'll use the food. Right now I hate to buy too much for fear it will go to waste. There are just too many "dining out" opportunities here. While we definitely enjoy the food, the opportunity to spend time with friends is just as important.
Dennis and Pam dropped us off at our park. I started work on the blog, and soon I was able to post our day's events for Saturday and now I'm working on Sunday. We are going to visit the National Butterfly Park this afternoon. It's warm out but very overcast, so its not uncomfortable to be outside. It should be a good day to sit in the park to watch the birds and butterflies.
In the meantime I suggested to Dean that we walk to our park's office to see if they had posted a sign up sheet for an excursion discussed on Saturday while I was there doing laundry. It consists of a 3.5-4 hour boat excursion that includes a variety of things to see and do - dolphins, visiting Ports of Isabel and Brownsville and concludes with lunch at a restaurant in the area. We walked in to find a couple of ladies visiting. While we searched the many sign up sheets for various events, posted on a large bulletin board, one of the ladies left. We were soon having a conversation with Shirley. When visiting someone for the first time here you go through a gamut of questions: where are you from, is this your first time in the valley, what site are you on, how long have you been here, etc. Once we had addressed these, we struck up a conversation about Instapots. Some ladies are going to do a session on them here in the park. Shirley has one but has never used it, so I had to tell her how much I loved mine. We discussed recipes and before leaving I promised to bring her copies of the recipes I use, and told her about a couple of Facebook pages I follow as well.
Soon after this point, I grabbed my camera as we headed out the door, hoping for some really good pictures at the National Butterfly Park. Upon arrival, we checked in, paid our fee of $5 each, and double checked the time they will feed the birds. While visiting the park several days ago the curator told us they fed the birds at 8:30 and 1:30 each day. When I asked the curator on duty if the feeding would be at 1:30 he told us it would be at 2:30. It was a bit frustrating since we hurried to get here before 1:30, but we made the best of it and enjoyed a leisurely walk from the park building to the bird feeding area. I took pictures of some butterflies and numerous signs along the way. As we worked our way to the feeding location, we noticed several people crowded together and it was apparent they were looking at something. As we approached them, told us they had sighted a painted bunting. Dean and I both looked and watched for quite awhile. Dean is pretty sure he saw a glimpse of it but it eluded me. A number of birds were flying in for "leftovers" from the previous feeding, which gave me the opportunity to get some nice pictures. At 3:00 we finally left without anyone ever showing up "to feed the birds". When we stopped at the park office I asked him about it, and told him of our disappointment the feeding never occurred. We still had a good time and I have several decent pictures.
Mocking Bird
 |
| Cardinal |
Green Jay
 |
| Golden-fronted Woodpecker I'm disappointed the first two pictures do not show up better here. You might try enlarging them to original size to see the colors better. Very pretty and difficult to get a picture of!! |
 |
| Three in 1 I believe these are a white tipped dove, red winged blackbird, and I'm not sure of the one at the bottom - he was a bonus I didn't know I had until I saw the picture. |
Long billed Thrasher - you can see he was really giving the ground a thrashing!
I could not find a picture in the flyer I have that looked anything like this bird, but we had fun watching him splash in the bit of water on this rock.
An Altimara Oriole. So pretty and fun to watch.
This little guy would not stay still very long and it was the best picture I could get. It is a titmouse, I believe a black-crested one. He flitted back and forth between this log and the tree to his right so fast he was a blur.
In the office they told us the butterflies are not really in here yet due to the cooler temperatures this year, so these are all I managed to get photos of.
 |
| Unknown |
 |
| Red Admiral |
 |
| Unknown |
Pretty yellow flower on an interesting looking weed.
Tomorrow is our 24th wedding anniversary. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful, fun-loving husband. It's hard to believe so much time has passed, but we are fortunate that we still enjoy one another's company as much, if not more than we did when we said our "I do's"! Happy anniversary Dean-o! I love you!
I'm sorry for the slow post on this. Besides the time it has taken to edit these pictures and select the ones I wanted to use, I had a bug that had me down for two full days (27 & 28). I would try to blame it on our anniversary dinner, but we both had the exact same thing. Fortunately, Dean was not affected by it.
Since I've lost those two days, I am behind on several things in preparation for our leaving here in less than two weeks, so bear with me again as I try to get things caught up - probably all in one post.
No comments:
Post a Comment