Montana Tours of 2005, February 11 to 14, 2005, Llano Grande & Iwo Jima

Finally we are able to show you the Montana as she sits this year at Llano Grande RV park. The grass is about half grown in, and the palm trees are only about 10 inches high. The lots, however, are very wide and the utilities are set up very nicely.

February 11 - 14, 2005

Still recovering from our colds we are still not doing much. Weather here is not the best, but then look at the weather they have been having in Arizona! OUCH. We have a day or two of rain, gray then we get a day or two that is rather nice.

Al finds a replacement TV at the local Best Buy, a 20 inch flat screen Toshiba. It has a great picture! A day after we get that all set up, we go to play a CD, and you guessed it, the CD changer will not open and we discover that it is fatally ill. The day we did laundry, it was rather damp outside and I could not hang out the shirts to dry, so we set up the little clothes rack we have in Montana. You guessed it, in the middle of the night, crack, crack and crash, the rack broke and I had to gather up all the still semi-wet clothes. Next morning we went to Linens N More and bought a new one, this one a bit more substantial than the old one. This is turning into the “replacement tour”.

On the 14th, we finally feel we are strong enough to undertake a day of sightseeing, so we head off to Harlingen. We visit the Iwo Jima monument. This is taken from the same mold as the monument in Washington D.C. It is quite breathtaking. There is a nice park, lots of memorial live oak trees placed in memory of fallen soldiers, a museum and a interesting movie on the Battle to take Iwo Jima. We have lunch in what is supposed to be one of the 50 best Mexican restaurants in the US. It is fine, but we think we found one here locally near our campground that is at least that good, maybe better! Yep, we have eaten there a couple of times! We also wander out to the Texas Air Museum, which will be closed by the end of February for ever, the collection is being sold off and all artifacts will be moved to other locations. It is an interesting collection of airplanes and World War II war memorabilia. The collection needs to be moved away from the salt air (we are near the Gulf) and parts of it needs some TLC, but we still find it an enjoyable way to spend a few hours. It was 92 degrees in the afternoon, February 14th! OK, we loved it, it is part of why we come to the Rio Grande Valley, the high temps!

Iwo Jima Monument in Harlingen Texas