To anyone in South Texas, "The Valley" means the lower Rio 
The peaceful Rio Grande
Grande Valley, the longest-settled part of the state. Spaniards and Mexicans made settlements, missions and ranchos along the river starting in the sixteenth century, and today the valley includes some 1.3 million Texans, nearly 90% of whom are of Hispanic ancestry. Across the border live some additional 4-5 million Mexicans, many of whom have working lives involving the U.S. side of the valley. And of course many American residents of the Valley make frequent crossings into Mexico.
The Rio Grande is a mighty American river, rising in the San Juan mountains of Colorado just East of the Continental Divide, making a fertile 
A pristine Texas beach
southerly swath across New Mexico, passing through El Paso and then hundreds of miles of very sparsely populated ranchland and desert before finally reaching the lower Rio Grande Valley in Laredo. The traveler tends to rush through the land between El Paso and Laredo, and to reflect this aversion, motels are few and small and old and far apart. The ground is covered with bushes and cactus and small trees and herds of cattle spread far and wide across the land.
You wouldn't know the Rio Grande is a mighty river to 
Porfirio Diaz' huge car
look at it, because all along its length the water is taken out and used for irrigation and drinking water. But there are miles and miles of ditches and canals across the fertile Rio Grande valley, and it is this river that sustains the lives of millions of people living on both banks.
We stayed two weeks in the cities of Brownsville and Corpus Christi situated in or near the Valley, in a tropical climate. It was hot and wet many of the days of our visit. Brownsville is 886 miles from Texhoma, on the Texas-Oklahoma border, and there are a lot of cattle ranches, oil wells, and 
Returning sand to the ocean
cotton fields in between. We were as far south as you can go in the United States, save for the Florida Keys. South Texas is famous for its pink grapefruit.
Brownsville is a very modern city with a historic past. Porfirio Diaz' huge saloon car is on display in the history museum. Brownsville is a maritime city, where shipyards work on the massive oil rigs that are sent forth into the Gulf of Mexico to find and pump oil. We visited the waterfront along South Padre Island, Padre Island, and Mustang Island. We expected to see the remains of damage from Hurricane Harvey. Our first 
Pelicans patrolling their boat
view was along the beach, where a highloader methodically removed pile after pile of beautiful soft fine sand which had washed up or blown up onto the land; his job was to rebuild and extend the beach.
Corpus Christi is a long, skinny city stretching along the waterfront formed by the Nueces River and Corpus Christi Bay and extending close to the beaches. Much of the city's outer area is heavily commercial, including oil refineries, agricultural warehouses and processing factories, while the city center contains several attractive plazas. One popular 
South Texas orchid house
area is a miles-long shoreline drive, lined with beautiful waterfront homes; another is a downtown shopping and dining area adjacent to the largest of the marinas, protected by a massive sea wall, and unusual in the support of both pleasure craft and commercial fishing boats (the latter are popular with the local pelicans and gulls).
Efforts to develop the downtown area, however, are not complete. For example, the visitor center is a small store room in which the staff member is locked behind a window and 
Green iguana
has a limited collection of materials. This did, however, include paper bracelets giving half-off prices for the more well-known attractions. We took advantage of one of them to visit the South Texas botanical garden, featuring a beautiful collection of plumeria, a flowering tree with which we were unfamiliar. The garden also had a lovely large orchid greenhouse and many cages of parrots and reptiles!
Farther North, though, we saw more hurricane damage. In Port Aransas, houses and motels and restaurants had been gutted after the flood waters had receded. The main streets 
Turkey vultures on platform
were lined with huge piles of furniture, cabinets, and huge steel trash bins which had been filled with drowned items. An endless parade of trucks was carrying them away on the ferry which was the only contact with the mainland at the northern end of the island.
At the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge we were too early to see the whooping cranes, still a tiny population but slowly becoming more numerous. The refuge had built a special viewing platform for bird watchers. A succession of metal 
Human interloper on platform
ramps led us from ground level to above the tree tops, where several turkey vultures were established on the railings and waiting for dinner to pass below them. Unfortunately, the vultures had covered the top level of the platform with guano, obliterating the signs and telescopes intended for tourists. They gave up their perches only grudgingly, allowing us to approach within a few yards before they spread their large wings and awkwardly got airborne.
