I have mentioned many times in this blog that all the programming we get on TV comes from San Antonio, Texas a town 144 miles east of Del Rio. I am more aware of what goes on in that beautiful yet far away city than I am of what is happening locally where we live.
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| These guys were having a lot of fun, especially with an ice chest full of beer! |
San Antonio has a tradition dating back 30 plus years of allowing the population to camp out at Brackenridge Park over the Easter weekend. Families go a week early to stake out a claim and save a space (usually grandparents or their non-working relatives) so their kinfolk can join them later in the week.
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| Campsite complete with an Easter basket pinata |
I guess the powers that be decided to give us Del Rioans a chance to start a tradition of our own using San Antonio as an inspiration and a couple of years back allowed camping in the local parks during the Easter weekend. Per the local newspaper this starts on Friday but I drove by late this afternoon and there were a lot of families already there.
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| See that nice house in the background? It is located in the Del Rio side This park is located in the San Felipe side.  the creek all to themselves. |
All parks in Del Rio welcome campers during this time but the most popular parks are those that are along the banks of San Felipe Creek. Long before there was Lake Amistad we had this wonderful creek that is the source of our local drinking water and where the majority of the locals learned to swim.
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| I cannot remember how many times my friends and I jumped off this bridge. This is part of Moore Park but since it faces highway 90 it was known back in my day as The State Park. |
Back in the late 60’s not everyone could pay a quarter or however much it cost to swim in the only swimming pool Del Rio had at the time and which was located at Moore Park. Even if you could most of your friends were swimming in the creek anyway, so that is where the majority of the people congregated. Besides it was in town and within walking distance. Back then people only had one vehicle and dads usually drove it to work, so going to Lake Amistad was like going out of town.
San Felipe Creek snakes along the city and divides the town from the poor working class mostly Mexican-American that live in the neighborhood bearing that same name (San Felipe) and the Anglo-Saxon and/or middle class Mexican Americans that live in the Del Rio side.
Our schools consolidated in the 70’s and I am proud to be a member of the Del Rio High School class that went all four years with the former members of San Felipe High School. One of these days I may do a post on the history and importance of San Felipe Creek.
For now I leave you with a couple of pictures of the early birds and hopefully I can bring you some more on Saturday or Sunday when the parks will be packed to capacity. Wish they had given us the opportunity to camp out when I was kid, it would have been a lot of fun and made for some great memories.
Good night. May you all have Terlingua Dreams.
