Sunday 1-19-25 Rio Grande Valley Trip Begins

 

Road Trip

We started out trip to the Rio Grande Valley at 6:15 in morning. It took us seven hours to go 370 miles, which included a few stops. We stopped at Jack 'n' Jill Donuts to grab a couple of donuts, a bathroom break and a lunch break at Whataburger. The temperature this morning was 22 degrees in Belton, TX and the high was 45 degrees in Pharr, TX. It was very cold because we had a strong wind out of the north. I napped most of the ride.

For lunch we stopped at Whataburger in Alice and shared a Monterey Melt Burger and an order of onion rings. Larry had asked them to cut the sandwich in half and they did. We were very surprised they actually wrapped each piece individually. The service was excellent. Whataburger is located right off of the highway so it was easy to get back on the highway.

Before leaving on our trip we loaded the rest of the stuff that I didn't load last night. I put water and sodas in two coolers and put them in the car. I put some snacks in a bag. We loaded our electronic devices. Larry turned off the ice maker and hot water heaters and lastly he shut off the water going into the house. Then we were on the road.

We're staying at La Quinta while in Pharr. We will be here from Sunday 1-19-25 to Friday 1-24-25. The Last time Larry stayed in a hotel was back in 2020 when we did a surprise visit to see his mom. Our room is huge with a king size bed, dresser drawers (three), microwave, refrigerator, desk area and a chair. The bathroom is larger than most hotesl. It has a full size shower with shampoo, conditioner and body wash. The sink area has a nice counter and a single sink and the toilet is an oval seat. The colors are very bright. They make your bed and clean your room everyday, unless you put the don't disturb sign on the door. It has a workout area, free breakfast, swimming pool outside and a spa, which was empty. 

The workout room is on the first floor. It has two treadmills, stationary bicycle, elliptical machine and a couple of multi-weight lifting machine. They supply you with a towel in the room. I took advantaged of the room. I did the treadmill for 25 minutes, bicycle for 20 minutes and six different weight lifting exercises (3 sets of 10 reps with the weight of 20 to 30 pounds). I use to lift more weight but I hadn't done any weight lifting or a treadmill in years. I was the only one in the gym today.

 

The treadmills

The elliptical machine and bicycle

The weight machines

I did 1.19 mile on the treadmill in 25 minutes

I did 2.53 miles on the bicycle in 20 minutes

 

For dinner we walked over to Teriyaki Madness, this was our first time to eat at one. We shared a medium orange chicken bowl. It was so big we had to bring home about half of it. The closest location to our house would be in Round Rock. The service was good and the food was very tasty. The picture is from their website. We didn't have the veggie instead we doubled the rice. We didn't have the white rice we had the spicy brown rice.

 

 

 I did my Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event today was Event: Two Game Tango Mini of 10 games (5 Klondike and 5 Pyramid). It took me 1 hour, 24 minutes and 27 seconds, which put me in 22nd place in my group. I ended up doing 18,000 steps, which put me in 6th place in my group for the week with a total of 126,150 steps.