Brenda's Adventures: Hidalgo Christmas Lights

We have had a nice week here, although we had some cooler days earlier this week. We made a quick trip to Mexico for a dental check up but mostly I have enjoyed just hanging out: reading, biking, a trip to the market, working on my book, banging on my guitar a bit,and even writing some poetry.
Last night our next door neighbours Jim and Judy took us to another RV park for a bit of dancing. Actually, it turned out to be a lot of dancing. People down here really love to dance so we had a great time. The band was very good; mostly country with a few old rock tunes thrown in. Down here, all the singles sit on one side of the dance floor and the couples sit on the other. This gives all the single people the opportunity to meet each other. They also have what they call the "waterfall" dance where you dance half way around the room with one partner, then you leave your partner and return to the other end of the room and dance with the next person in line. It is a great way of meeting people and everyone had fun. Our table was full with half Canadians and half Americans and we all had a great time getting to know each other.

Today, we decided to go to Hidalgo. We wanted to do a bit of exploring and stay for the Christmas Light display. We drove to the old part of town to check out where the light show was going to be, parked our car at the old court house and jail, and walked around a bit.

As we had lots of time to kill, we decided to go to the Pumphouse Nature Park which is also a major birding centre. There are over 500 different species of birds in this area and over 300 different kinds of butterflies. Although we did not see any birds, we did see some beautiful butterflies and I managed to get a couple good shots of them.

This guy was totally cooperative and patient with me while I was trying to get my close up. It was almost like he was showing off for the camera.

The park itself is very pretty. There are over 1200 different species of plants in this area and this little park had some very interesting plants including this hairy cactus.

We toured the pumphouse while we were there. At one time there were several pumphouses around this area that pumped water from the Rio Grande River into irrigation canals which provided irrigation to all of the surrounding area. The engines and pumps are massive and could pump 350,000 gallons of water per minute.

After we finished the tour, we went for coffee and biscuits at a cute little Mexican Restaurant and then on to do a bit of shopping.

We returned after dark to the old part of town and began our walking tour of the Christmas Lights. Rather than try to describe them, I am just going to show you what 3 million lights look like.