January 22, 2017. Mission's nature parks

CAMPGROUND:  Another free night in Retama Village.

LOCATION:  Mission, Texas in south central tip of the state

WEATHER:  Super windy.  Highs about 80  

We toured the state park that is within walking distance of our new home.  It is one of the world's birding centers.  People come from all over to look at the birds, mostly migratory.  We sat on one of the park's comfortable swings to watch.

Then we drove about a half mile to the National Butterfly Center.  The butterflies stop here on their way from Mexico to Canada.  

Back at the village, we walked around getting ideas from other homeowners about layouts.  

We learned that the word Retama is a type of tree in this area.

 This is the lot where we will build our tiny house.  We chose one that is next door to a lot with mature trees, hopefully providing shade.  

 

Our tiny house is a bit of a new concept in this village. There are normal houses here, along with houses called port homes which are small homes with huge enclosed RV garages.  The other most common type of housing units here are small 12 x 24 "coach houses" on lots with concrete pads for RVs.  Some of the coach houses are finished out to use as a sitting room or a laundry  with washer/dryer or just storage.  People don't live in them, as they live in their RVs.    The developers built one spec coach house that is larger than the standard ones.  This is what we are buying.  It is 12 x 40.  Ours will be the second one like this built here.  It will look like this...

We are going to design it so that we will live in it while we are here.  We can decide whether to rent it out when we are traveling, or just rent the RV pad.  

 

In the evening, we relaxed in the hot tub in the pool area.  We were the only ones there.  Nice!

DINNER:  I tried out a new recipe using my new immersion blender.  I made a cauliflower soup purée with chorizo, and lime/cilantro sour cream.   Very tasty!