Cam and Nancy: Laredo, TX

The morning was cool, 7 C, but sunny. We had a leisurely start, and headed south on Highway #83. We were soon headed down out of the hill country, and onto the agricultural land around Uvalde.

There’s a thing here about ranch gates. The most basic is a cattle guard opening in the fence where the driveway is. The next step is a gate that you open and close. This escalates to the open/close gate with large posts on either side, which begats the open/close, large posts, with an overhead sign with the ranch name (i.e., Rocks-A-Lot). Then starts the custom welded/wrought iron gates. At this point, the gate is usually set back, with small walls on other side. The walls on either side get both taller and longer, in either limestone or adobe. Then the plantings start, with palm trees, large agave plants, lighting, and perhaps an electrically operated gate. I’ve found that the ranch behind the gate does not have to meet the standard set by it’s impressive entrance. A $50,000 gate entrance can open to a red mud road winding off into the scrub. A cultural thing, I suppose.

The agricultural land gradually gives way to oil country. The low oil prices have not slowed fracking activity, apparently, judging by the large volume of dusty, oily trucks and equipment hammering up and down the road at high rates of speed. You can tell it’s oil country, when the average 1/2 ton morphs into a F-450 4 door, 4WD dually, blowing past you at the legal speed limit of 80 mph.

We entered Laredo in the middle afternoon, and headed to Lake Casa Blanca State Park, which is a reservoir surrounded by the Laredo business outskirts, and the airport. We emerged from the Bigfoot into tropical air; 32 C, high humidity, and the season somewhere between late spring and early summer. There are large grasses beside the Bigfoot, 15 or 20 feet high; perhaps Bamboo. The noisy Boat-tailed Grackles give that tropical sound. But still no parrots.

Kirk & Nancy went walking, and discovered a lot of wild flowers and a hill.