Wednesday January 23, 2008

We woke up this morning to dense fog. We thought Cookie and Ron might cancel, but since it was not out and out raining, we decided to go. They picked us up at the hotel and we headed north. We had a wonderful day exploring everything LBJ. We visited the house where he was born, the one in Johnson City where the family moved when he was 5, and then the Texas White House which was a family ranch very near the house where he was born. The large ranch house was quite lovely - large live oaks in the yard where LBJ used to entertain guests. The tour of the ranch was on a small bus and apparently when Lady Bird was alive, she used to come out and greet the bus visitors or at least wave to them from her garden. We saw the barns, the old cars - including an amphibious one, the Hereford cattle, bison and many deer and antelope which live on the ranch. Now that Lady Bird has passed away, the ranch house will also become part of the tour (as soon as the daughters have removed all of the personal items that they wish). We also saw several films during the day and were amazed at the number of environmental and educational bills which were passed during his tenure - I guess you tend to forget who does what when you don't particularly pay close attention to politics. We did enjoy the ranch - unfortunately, we couldn't see the promised lovely vista as the fog hung on all day. We did have a lovely lunch at a nearby Texas style restaurant. We also got to visit a living farm nearby - saw some baby pigs and lambs and talked to a guide who told us that they had made sausage the week - he explained the process and it was quite interesting - they still make it the way the original German immigrants to this area did. We got to the town of Fredricksburg late so we didn't get to the Museum of the Pacific (Admiral Nimitz) which I know Dave would have loved, but we did find a couple of stores that were still open. One of them was Dooley's - a real old-fashioned five and ten cent store (although everything costs as bit more now). They had everything in there: clothing, kitchenware, toys, candy, sewing items, tools, etc. It was great to wander up and down the aisles. The other store we stopped into was a real trip - RamblinRob's sells salsa, jams, pasta sauce, flavored oil, flavored peanut butter, fudge, etc. and you can taste everything before you buy! They have baskets of wheat crackers out and one jar of each thing they sell. We had a wonderful time tasting the most delicious things - we could have made a meal of it. We bought a jar of blackberry preserves to take camping with us, but we also took their catalog so we can order some of their wares when we return home. We stopped at a lovely park which had an octagonal Lutheran church (closed, but we toured the outside) and took a few pictures in front of the statues. We then headed back to San Antonio and stopped for dinner at a BBQ place called Rudy's. It was casual dining with picnic tables inside and we had a variety of things: sausage, brisket, ribs, beans, potato salad, and the best creamed corn I have ever tasted! We got back to the hotel about 8:30. Cookie gave me 2 pendants that her father had made - they were wonderful - one was of moss agate and the other was dinosaur bone! She gave Dave a lovely ring that Uncle GC had made and she even had a beautiful pendant for Justine. It was such a lovely thought and we were overwhelmed when we saw what was in the packages. We hope we didn't wear them out with all of the driving we did yesterday, but we did make plans to meet again on Friday to go to the Missions.