A Good Day, With Butterflies

One of my favorite shows is "Desperate Housewives," which is a comedic soap opera about the trials and sacrifices of a group of housewives in an American town. "The sacrifices of marriage" is a cliche'd expression that's so common that nobody even thinks about it.

Today wasn't about sacrifices, though. Today was one of those perfect days that is like the icing on the cake. We slept in late, then we headed over to Renee's in Mission for lunch. Sat out on the porch with salads and iced tea and soup and enjoyed the weather. The food was great and so were the surroundings. Graham said that it was like the kind of place you dine in when you're on vacation.

Then we headed out to go to the Mission Butterfly Festival. We got some bad directions and ended up taking the exit to Bentsen Palm Drive, instead of the Bryan exit like we should have. So we headed down south Bentsen Palm Drive, and in about 6 miles we saw a small blue sign directing us to the NABA Butterfly Park. This is the place we tried unsuccessfully to find a month ago.

It turned out to be a completely unexpected delight. Although it's small, it's well-designed. We saw, and I am not making this up, thousands of butterflies. There was a steady flow of butterfly enthusiasts into and out of the park. Everyone looked pretty much the same: Anglo, "a certain age," and carrying a variety of digital cameras. In the visitor center, people gathered to show the employees the photos they shot and ask for help identifying butterflies. It was kind of funny, watching Winter Texans stretching the straps of their Kodak Easyshares to show a curious onlooker the photos displayed on the LCD screen on the back of the camera.

In addition to the butterfly gardens, there are several walking trails that take you through some hackberry woods. The hackberry trees were in bloom and were covered with American Snout butterflies and bees. You could hear the bees above your head like a low thrumming noise as you walked. However the mosquitoes were too much to take, and I got back out in the sunshine, where they weren't so bad.

After a couple of hours we decided to try to find the official butterfly festival, and this time we got good directions--from the lady at the NABA Butterfly Park. The festival was a big disappointment after being out in the wild and seeing such a wonderful variety of butterflies in their natural state. The festival, such as it was, was a park beside a highway, full of food vendors and Giant Jumps. We got into the left turn lane to enter the parking lot, but after seeing such a spectacular show of butterflies out at the Butterfly Park, the festival was too much of a letdown. We pulled back into trafffic and headed over to McAllen.

We went to get coffee at the Starbucks at Trenton. Hmmm, this was the second time in two weeks they took forever to get my order out, and they would have messed it up if I hadn't caught them in time. Oh well. It didn't do anything to diminish the day. The butterflies, the weather, the lunch, and the husband were all perfect. Like icing on a cake.