Quinta Mazatlan and the McAllen Public Library

This morning we went to Quinta Mazatlan for the first time--and it won't be the last. We took the weekly house tour and learned a lot about the history of this historical adobe mansion, which is also one of the sites for the World Birding Center. It's a Mansion With a Mission:

Quinta Mazatlan is now an urban sanctuary working to enrich people's lives by sharing knowledge about birds, plants and environmental stewardship in South Texas.

This sign looks like a bit of humor, but our guide indicated that a similar sign was used in the mansion's early days to discourage thieves and such, since the home was outside the city and quite isolated.

The tour took us outdoors too, to explore some of the 20-acre Tamaulipan Thornforest property.

Ceiling beams are reputed to be from the cedars of Lebanon.

After our visit, we went to the Remington Restaurant in the Embassy Suites Hotel  to enjoy the seafood buffet. The food was very rich and delicious--good for an occasional treat, but not a steady diet. We had Christmas dinner here with friends a couple of years ago. On that occasion, Santa came around and offered to pose with guests sitting on his lap. Jean took him up on that for one of our more memorable photos.

Our next stop was the McAllen Public Library. It's in an old Walmart building, but completely remodeled and landscaped. We signed up for library cards, which are free and available to anyone (you needn't be a resident of McAllen). Now we can check out eBooks from the comfort of our home, but of course we didn't leave the library empty handed. I checked out a book and a DVD movie, and Ken bought a couple of books from the Friends bookstore.

We stopped on the way home to get diesel and some food. Then we set out to walk for an hour. Our first destination was Guest Relations, where Ken picked up his new camera, sent USPS by Amazon. He's got plenty to keep him busy and happy for quite a while, downloading softward and checking out the camera's capabilities.