Foggy and warm again this morning.
Lyn seems to have regressed and the cough has taken a hold now.
We decided we would head out any way; about 60 miles back on the road we arrived from Brownsville on is a working ranch that has guided tours. As usual we had issues finding the place, but that’s another story. We arrived in time to book our tickets for the tour and had enough time to head back into town to get some lunch.
Once back at the ranch we boarded a small 20 seat bus for the tour, luckily the A/C was working well as the temperature was 30C / 86F. The ranch started life back in the 1850’s when a river boat captain bought a couple of cheap land claims in the middle of nowhere. He continued adding land, and there are now about 850,000 acres with 30, 000 head of cattle and 300 horses. The horses raised down on the ranch are known as quarter horses, some of which are quite famous and valuable; at least I now know what a quarter horse is.
The first cattle we saw were Texas longhorns. Although the picture isn’t too clear, you should be able to see where the name comes from.
Texas Long Horn King Ranch Tx
Although there are a number of these cattle on the ranch they are kept for historical reasons, not commercial.
Further around the ranch we spotted a couple of deer
Deer - King Ranch Tx
The ranch employs between 150 and 300 workers depending on the time of year, many of the workers live for free in houses on the ranch. We even saw our first “real” cowboys riding around as well.
We came across a field that was fairly clear of vegetation (each field can be from 100 to 30,000 acres in size) with plenty of cattle grazing. I guess this is what I had as my pre-conceived idea of a Texas view
Cows Grazing King Ranch Tx
We also saw a couple of new (to us) birds, the buzzard and the sand hill crane, there were probably a few others but the guides “John Wayne” accent was a little hard to translate at times