Southbound Canucks: our month in Mission Texas

Nov 9th to Dec 5th:

We always enjoy our time at Lemon Tree RV Inn in Mission. Fun times with friendly people. This was our third November at Lemon Tree. When we first arrived there were 88 people in the park for our Remembrance Day dinner. There were over 129 people with more to arrive in the coming week when we departed.

We are lucky to celebrate Thanksgiving twice each year. Canadian Thanksgiving with our family and American Thanksgiving with the winter Texans of Lemon Tree. It was a superb dinner with management providing 8 turkeys. Our contribution was Vic's turnip with brown sugar and butter. 😏

The oranges are ripening on the trees within the park and we were asked to pick some. If they don't get picked, they fall to the ground and end up in the garbage. So the two of us picked enough oranges to make 2 litres of orange juice. We also had a large bag of sweet red grapefruit to eat -- what we hadn't consumed before we left for Mexico, we turned into juice in order to take it across the border.

The oranges on the tree on our site weren't ripe by the time we left

There are lots of activities at Lemon Tree. We don't shoot pool, play poker, golf or play bingo or horse racing but we do play shuffleboard, 500, and euchre. Plus Bev watched the game Pitch before we left so she can try it when we return to Lemon Tree in March. There is a community trailer with an exercise room, puzzle room, library and craft room. Lots to keep one busy. There were the morning exercise classes and afternoons spent in the heated swimming pool and the hot tub. The evenings were clear skies, no smoke from burning garbage (which we suffer from in Mexico) so we were able to take evening walks around the park to get in our 1 1/2 miles per day. Plus we were able to sleep with our windows open! Margarita Mondays at the restaurant next door is a popular event! And why not when they are 2 for $4.

Every Wednesday there is the weekly Community breakfast meeting, Thursday evenings is a pancake supper and Sunday is hamburger/hot dog night.

We enjoyed watching the wildlife too. Besides the wild bunnies and the black chicken wandering around the campground, there were 2 gila woodpeckers in one of the trees beside our motorhome. You can hear them chattering off and on through the day. A couple of flocks of small green parrots fly over twice a day -- noisy --you can hear them coming from a distance! There was a Swainson hawk that hunts the bunnies and sometimes sat on the transformer near our motorhome. Every evening before the sun goes down, flocks of black birds by the thousands come from west to flock on the wires and in the trees a few miles east.

The first week after we arrived in Mission there were lots of monarch butterflies on their way south. But we didn't see them after that. There are a few other types of pretty butterflies that stay the winter.

Typical of our month stay, Vic gets work done on the motorhome. He fixed our electric steps so they come completely in when traveling, installed new gas pistons in our electric awning, started scraping the clear bra off the front of the motorhome, installed new external speakers for both TV sets (guess they don't last long with the rough roads in Mexico) and had the front wheels balanced on the motorhome (see previous blog).