I used to walk this trail by the town of Hidalgo.

 

South Texas points of interest

 

 

But there is a problem with it.  It’s on the other side of our border fence.  The border fence doesn’t follow the exact border.  The real border is the river.  It would be inconvenient to put a fence right down the middle of the river, so it has been built where it was most practical to put it, sometimes quite a ways from the river.  This trail I like is entirely south of the border fence and maybe a mile north of the river.  When they built the fence, they left gaps for where the gates were going to be, but it was years before any gates showed up, so I parked the car on the north side of the fence, walked through the gap where the gate was going to be, and walked the trail.  Well, I can’t do that anymore.  They installed the gate, closed it, and left it closed.

 

Recently I discovered a different access point farther east; a gap in the fence that hasn’t been closed yet.  I can get on the other end of the trail and walk it right up to this point, where I used to start.  This is the view of our border wall from the south looking north.

 

Knowing the other access point now, this would have been a good loop trail.  I could cross over and walk the length of the trail on the south side of the fence, pop back through the gate to the north side, and walk a levee trail back to the car.  As it is though, I can still walk it as an out-and-back even though I have this aversion to out-and-back trails (going back the way you came being an admission of defeat).  Given the construction of that gate maybe an out-and-back can be excused in this instance.  (I probably don’t want to try climbing over the gate just for fun.)