MEDINA LAKE TT PRESERVE NEAR PIPE CITY, TX 3/10-14/11

Drove through beautiful hill country of Texas to Medina Lake TT where we planned to stay and sit a few days.

The preserve entrance is a little less ostentatious that LBJ's ranch, but very welcoming.

We immediately set up camp in a cedar grove next to Median Lake, then went for a relaxing walk on the shores.  Ann collected lots of white freshwater clam shells and found what appeared to be a sharks tooth (?????).

There are many areas here that remind us of Loab State Park in Oregon and brought back memories of years of Bringhurst, Cowley, Shorland, Gosson, Huff and Waggener monkeys in the trees there.

This park in infested with many, many deer.  They are very un-timid and stand around as if they are waiting for you to feed them.  This one stood outside our trailer door for 10 minutes, waiting.  When you walk outside, they come right up to you and look at you as if to say, "Well, what you got for me?"

 

 Even the rabbits here think we are here to serve them!!

The laundromat here on the preserve looks like the wash house on a plantation.  There is a large 2 story white house with a swimming pool right out front of where we sit on the front porch of the laundry room, reading e-mails as we wait for the laundry to finish.  Nice!!

We have been blessed with warm and albeit somewhat muggy weather.  We sleep with just a sheet mostly!

On  March 11 we took the whole day and drove to San Antonio, where we toured the Alamo.  It was another place that was familiar to us because of history.  Just imagine.  We are standing right where Glen Beck stood a year or so ago as he headed up a Tea Party rally.  Wow!!  A famous place!! And we are here!!!

The famous LIBERTY WELL!!!!!!  The history here is overwhelming!!

The inspiration for Ronald McDonald's Golden Arches!!!

Then we later went down to the place where Michael Jackson got his ideas for his later famous dance move, "THE RIVER WALK"!!!

We did stop for lunch along the River Walk at a sidewalk cafe.  It was great fu to watch the boats, walkers and birds go by.

Actually, the birds did not "go" by.  They stayed and looked at us.  They must have had lessons from the deer!!!   We gave in to their sorry faced looks and fed them right out of our hands.

Ever heard of hen pecked?  I wonder if it is anything like pigeon pecked???

...... and the band played on!  (As long as you gave them $10.00!!!!)

After a late lunch/early dinner we waddled our full little tummies down the River Walk for another hour or so and then headed back towards our truck.  We were amazed at how beautiful the Alamo was when lit up at night!

Wayne tried to strike up a conversation with someone he thought he recognized.  The man tended to not be interested in him and even leaned away from him.  Wayne does have bad breath sometimes after eating Mexican food!!

The touristy horse and carriages were beautiful as they rolled down the street and even as they waited for customers.

It was a long and beautiful day we spent together!

The next day, on the 12th, we headed back to San Antonio to go to the temple and guess what Wayne found????

Two of them!!

The San Antonio Texas Temple is just beautiful!  It is patterned after the Twin Falls Idaho Temple, but has a lot more stained glass and is perched upon a hill like the Oakland California Temple.  We were inside about three hours.

Then we came out and walked around the outside.

One of the many windows.  They are much more beautiful from the inside out, with the sun shining through them!

As we were leaving Wayne got in a conversation with a gentleman that told us that "You haven't been to Texas if you haven't eaten at Rudy's Bar-B-Q!!"  So he told us where the nearest one was and off we went!

Just so happens, he directed us to the original store in a chain of 29 restaurants.

It was an experience just to get in the place and be served!  The food was great, though a little spendy.

You could dine in or out on the patio.  We chose inside and found the place to be like a big family gathering.  The guys at the table behind Wayne were very friendly and we conversed with them through the whole eating experience.  We decided that this was a place we would like to take our kids someday!!

  

Anyway, on the 12th we once again got home late and with very full bellies!

The 13th and 14th we just stayed around the preserve, relaxed, read, typed, walked and visited.  We needed the break!  Too much sight seeing makes for tired old people!  We love our Thousand Trails campgrounds where we can sit and relax amongst other full time RV'ers.

We leave here on the March 15th.

LBJ RANCH 3/9/11

On March 9th we set about touring what was once called "The Texas White House".  Ann and I spent 5 of our teenage years with Lyndon Baines Johnson as our president.  We thought we knew all about the man, so thought it would be interesting to tour his ranch.  Here is a statue he had placed across the river from his ranch.  He wanted it laced there to remind people, after he was gone, how specially he loved this ranch.  He wanted the inscription to read, "That's my home."
As we spent about 1 1/2 days touring the land and homes of his great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and himself; as we learned more of this man's life, values, stubbornness, love of Texas and family, his love of practical jokes, love of humanity, insatiable appetite for having things go "my way", his deep love of his wife and his love of his ranch; we grew to respect the man, not all his values and customs, but the power and big heart of the man.

 

Every ranch in Texas, it seems, has a rock or stone gateway to their ranch.  Some bigger and some smaller.  This is his.

 During all the time of his great-grandparents to the time LBJ became Vice President of the USA, there was no bridge from the road, across the river to the ranch and no locked gate.  Then when he became Vice President, they built a guard shack.

Until recently, they had to cross to the ranch, through the gate and then across the spillway of a cement dam.  During flood times, there were no crossings .

As we learned of this man and his life, we learned how much he loved this land.  As president, he spent 1/4th of his 5 years in office here.  He said he found peace and  settling of his emotions to where he could think clearly over the weighty matters of the country that he was in charge of.  We found that peace here too.

As we walked his land ......  

 

.....and toured his house, we were once again transported back in time.  We were on familiar territory.There were so many images from our minds that were planted there during newscasts watched and newspaper articles read.  It was like we had been here before.  This view with the dining room window in the center and the office on the right was one Wayne remembered from a time when Johnson was famous for pulling his beagles' ears.

The front of the house with the presidential bedroom to the right and the famous front porch where President Johnson entertained heads of state from other countries.

The very famous oak tree under which he and his generals and Dean Rusk and Robert MCNamara planned out military and government policy.  This spot is very etched in Wayne's memory as a place a "lazy president planned more ways to get our military killed off in a war in Viet Nam".  Age, time and experience tend to soften once harsh views.

President Johnson traveled back and forth from Washington in Air Force One. This smaller sized one for coming from Huston to the ranch he called "Air Force One-Half".

The school he attended at age 4. and in front of which he signed his first education bill.

It was an educational and peaceful visit to LBJ's ranch outside of Johnson City and near Stonewall, Texas.

Wayne did take his turn at the podium President Johnson used while making addresses from the hanger on his ranch.  Wayne is standing on his tiptoes to see over the massive podium that President Johnson's 6'3" frame leaned down to.  Wayne's first presidential speech was well received by the apt listeners near by.

His audience even stopped chewing a couple times to listen!!!

We left and drove to Boerne, Texas where we ate at a Taco Cabana.  It was
really good food and we were thus introduced to a new chain of restaurants
we had not heard of before.  Then we found the local Wal-Mart and set up
camp for the night.  It is a quiet place right next to a little creek.

TEXAS BEAUTY!!

Sometimes we take other kinds of pictures.  Long horns are plentiful!

Manhole covers are a work of art in their own right!

Wayne sometimes risks traffic to get a shot of a good cover!

 

They say that everything in Texas is bigger.  We have found this to be true.  This in a Texas Chihuahua!!!  Bentley, Brody, look out!!!!!

TEXAS CAPITOL BUILDING 3/8/11

As I am entering this entry several days after the fact, I had to go back to my journal to remind myself of what we did the day we toured the Texas Capitol Building.  I am amazed at how important keeping a journal is!  Ann and I make journal entries daily, as the days all tend to blur together, referring back to a journal keeps our head focused as to where we've been and when.  It is tempting at times when I am behind several days to just paste the journal entry in here, but the journal being much more detailed than we care to get on the blog entries, I resist.
Never the less, after spending the night in a Home Depot parking lot, buying a replacement light fixture for over the dining table and then installing it, we left Georgetown and headed towards Austin, Texas to tour what most Texas refer to as the building that should be the USA Capitol, seeing as how it was designed by the same architect that designed the USA capitol that is 3 feet shorter than the Texas one.
Austin is a huge city!

After artfully manuvering our large truck and trailer through the city streets, thanks to our handy little GPS unit and then skillfully squeezing into a street parking place between two school buses, we walked the several blocks to this beautiful building.  Here, we did have to go through security scanners and be looked at by the Texas Rangers on duty, but we were able to take our camera in along with hundreds of other school kids, high school performers and a convention of pink clothed abortion supporters that were attempting to stage a rally.  In spite of all that, we felt quite uncrowded.  Ann and I decided that this will be the house we will rent for our next family gathering!

The hinges on all the doors, kept reminding us where we were.  They were beautiful!!

But, we were well aware, at all times, that we were not being left alone.  Many Rangers were on patrol at all times and they made themselves really obvious.

Above the ranger, we peered up into the rotunda!  It was huge!!

Below the Ranger, we observed what he was intently eyeballing.  We stood and watched as three high school performing groups got their turn to perform in the capitol building.  Here is a group of bell ringers.  before them was a choral group and after them was an awesomely amazing Jamaican group with trash cans, drums and utilizing converted 50 gallon oil steel drum pans as the main instruments.  They played 2 Santana pieces and brought the house down.  They were an amazing group of high school kids!!  You can see some of the drum group forming off to the left of this picture.

We sat in the Senate Gallery and watched a senate subcommittee discuss a nursing issue.  Stan, it was very reminiscent of our times we spent with our 4th grade students at the Oregon Capitol.  It made me miss those years.

The House of Representatives was empty.

As we were able to wander around the building at will, we explored every nook and cranny we could and found many beautiful places that were not full of people!  See Ann up top?

Stan, this would have been easier for you and me and we probably would not got in trouble if the Oregon Capitol was set up like Texas.  The Supreme Court was actually in the same building and the access was not guarded as well!

As we cruised the portraits of former governors of Texas, we found this familiar face.

Then we found this unfamiliar face, but as we read below it, found him addressed as president.  Through more research, we were reminded that Texas was once an independent country prior to becoming a state on the U.S..  They had several presidents before they had governors!!

This guy was once a U.S. Congressman for the state of Tennessee, but became more famous by dying in Texas at the Alamo.  David Crockett.  This larger than life size portrait hangs in the capitol building in tribute to his brief service at the Alamo.

And these guys are state congressmen here in Texas being interviewed by some reporters!  It was quite a boisterous discussion.  Texans tend to get a little carried away in their discussions!!  We found it amazing how prevalent Stetsons were in the Capitol building!

Throughout the building there were many tile mosaics.  It was difficult to find the same ones.  There were many different ones like this and.....

....this one!!

We spent many hours here, both inside and outside this magnificent building.  Outside, the statuary made it quite evident that Texans are proud of their service men that served in the fight for independence from Mexico and their men that fought in the Civil War.  Texas was a confederate state and in some ways, we felt they still not only think of themselves that was, but also still as an independent country.  Even so, they, so far, are the friendliest people we have visited in this last year!!

It was a great day, after which we also toured the Capitol Visitors Center and then drove west to Johnson City, the ancestral home, birth place and life long home of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.  After walking through his grandparents homestead, we fueled up and then parked in a nearby Ace hardware parking lot for the night.