Falcon Lake State Park

We went to Falcon Lake State Park. We wanted to see the area and we wanted to check out an example of a Texas State park. Falcon lake is a man-made lake created by the dam across the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico) river. This was built in 1953 to provide a source of water during dry spells in the Rio Grande valley. And they do get dry spells here. We've been here since Nov. 2 and we've had 3 drizzely days and a couple of cloudy days. Otherwise it's been sunny and warm to hot. As a matter of fact, according to the local weatherman, most of our days have been 5 to 10 degrees warmer than normal this winter (lucky us).

Anyhow it was a nice park, somewhat isolated though. We wanted to check it out because we think that next time we come to Texas (next year??), we wanna wander around as opposed to staying in one place for the winter. The park cost $2 per person for day use and $16 a day for full hookups, or $96 per week. The rv sites are spacious and each come equipped with a firepit, bbq, and picnic table with a shade canopy. It's part of the birding/butterfly trail throughout the valley, and they give you a list of locations and the birds etc. that you may see at each location. You can only book for 14 days at a State park, but if you're spot is available, you can stay longer.

We saw some neat birds. Here's a few pics of a couple of great egrets we saw. We watched this egret fight with his fish for about 10 minutes. Of course, if we tried to get too close, it'd move 100 metres down the beach, land and fight with the fish again. The lake is very high right now, and several of the lakefront camp spots are flooded out, but hey, there's always the other side of the road.

As we wandered about, we'd see different birds, but most of them were to far away to get a pic of. We watched several hawks flying about, but thiswas the only pic we could get of one roosting in a tree. We also got a pic of an egret roosting. Pretty cool, eh?

In another area of the park we say a great blue heron. They sound cooler than they are, they don't photograph well (a carpenter and his tools?).And we couldn't get nearly as close to them as we could to the egret.

The biggest problem with the park is it's isolation. We drove 130k to get there and if you needed anything, food etc., you had to go to La Joya (about 30k) or Rio Grande City (about 50k) to shop. But we think we'll try to stay here for a week or so next time.

We stopped in La Joya (pronounced La Hoya) on the way home. They have an observation platform on the bluffs at the Rio Grande river. Technically it's for birding, but the whole time we were there, so was the border patrol looking up and down the river watching for illegals crossing into the U.S.This is looking up the river, and this is looking over into Mexico.

Anyhow, that's it for today. We're starting to plan our trip home. We're gonna do the summer at Green Acre RV Resort in Waterloo. We're planning wander on home taking a week in each of Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Little Rock Arkansas. That'll give us a week to get home from Little Rock and have us home by April 15th. That's the plan anyway.