The Valley has an idiosyncratic charm. I’m always finding the unexpected, the amusing and touching.
I quite like Lady Liberty touting for business outside a tax preparation office.
On a country road, this Fantasyland ‘castle’ - an Hispanic vision of grandeur - has visitors applying the brakes.
It’s a cliché, I know, but they think big in Texas, even in a city that anywhere else would be a hamlet.
At the regional campus of the University of Texas, the Oscar Mayer ‘Wienermobile’ is also visiting. Note the license plate. This is a descendant of the first Wienermobile, which appeared in 1936.
The lower Rio Grande Valley is one of the world’s top bird and butterfly watching destinations. So, the university provides binoculars to check the foliage.
Some of the local wildlife is not so benign. 'Snakes' means rattlesnakes.
Any place that preserves a cat’s grave gets my vote. When Mission was building its spiffy new library, the last resting place of Morton Downy - a feline named after an American entertainer - was carefully protected. He is shaded by a specially planted anacua tree.
