B'Day B'ride

While the Honda is getting repaired in Del Rio (looks like 2 or 4 October now) we decided to press on with the RV and our original plan to visit Brownsville and S. Padre Island. We drove to the Body of Christ (Corpus Christi) on Sunday (appropriate) and then down to Brownsville on Monday. Tuesday (29th) was Joy's birthday so we celebrated by taking a 14 mile round-trip birthday bike ride in 90+ degree heat with 85% humidity (seemed like a good idea at the time). We started at the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park and rode down a nice paved bike path 6-7 miles all the way into downtown Brownsville. (After viewing a movie about the battle in the Visitors Center we were going to walk to the actual battlefield site but the "Caution: Snakes" sign at the head of the path caused an immediate about face.)
Palo Alto is the site of the first battle of what became the Mexican War. The outcome of that war in 1846-47 is the United States doubled in size by adding Texas and what would become 6 other states (California, New Mexico, Arizona among them). It is call the "Forgotten War" because it comes so close to the Civil War it barely gets mentioned in most history books.
Fort Brown, around which the City of Brownsville grew up after the war, was where Ed's great great grandfather, Ezekiel Vincent Hatch, served as a private in the US Army in 1851-1852. While we did get a look back in history by visiting the Brownsville Museum, what is left of Fort Brown itself is subsumed by Texas Southernmost University and difficult to actually see/learn anything.
We missed a huge afternoon thunderstorm and made it back to our RV at Palo Alto Park before they sent out a search party. The Birthday excitement was not over, however. We had an eventful trip in the motorhome trying to find a place to have dinner to celebrate Joy's youth. More on that later...