Good day to y’all. Please accept my apologies if I have confused you with two different King Ranch Tours. They are similar, but they are different – let me explain. First of all, let’s talk about what is the same in both of the tours.

You will be met at your departure point by a Go … With Jo! Guide who will stay with you from the beginning to the end of the day when you are returned to your departure point. That guide will share a lot of history of the Rio Grande Valley and will ask you to help watch for the native wildlife. You might see Rio Grande Turkey, or the elusive Nilgai and possibly some White Tail Deer or a wild hog or a javelina as you travel along in your charter coach.

Once you arrive at the King Ranch, another well versed guide will board the bus – one who is especially schooled in the history of the life of the King Ranch founder, Richard King and his wife, Henrietta. This guide might have even grown up on the ranch. Travel over a twelve-mile loop road through the ranch as you learn all about its founding. A Texas style barbecue lunch is included on both tours.

Now the tours begin to differ a bit. On the King Ranch Tour, you will visit the Henrietta Memorial Museum located in an old icehouse which was very important to the vegetable farmers of the Rio Grande Valley. Still to this day, vegetable farmers ship their produce to northern points, but now the vegetables are generally shipped in modern refrigerated trucks. The first stop to ice down the vegetables was in Kingsville at what is now the museum. If you look carefully at the brick walls of the museum, you can see remnants of salt that was used in producing the ice.

The King Ranch Farm Tour will not visit the museum. Time limits just will not permit us to include everything in a one-day tour. The Henrietta Museum is a very good museum. Visit it on your own as you journey to Corpus or as you are entering or leaving the Rio Grande Valley.

So, on the King Ranch Farm Tour, instead of visiting the museum, we will instead visit the farm and the feed lot. We will drive through one of the largest farms operated by King Ranch. Being good land stewards, the King Ranch observes crop rotation. One year the three-mile-long furrows may be planted in grain, the next year they might be cotton. At the end of the road is one of the modern cotton gins in the Rio Grande Valley.

Included in the King Ranch Farm Tour is a drive through the feed lot where cattle are being fattened for market. No pictures are allowed while viewing the feed lot.

Time permitting, both tours will make a stop in the downtown area where you can visit the King Ranch Saddle Shop. Just across the street is a very popular drug store. Treat yourself to an ice cream cone or a banana split – this is an extra not included in the cost of the tour. But what a perfect ending to a fun billed educational day.