Friday, April 22, 2011

Happy Easter everyone, hope you have wonderful holiday.

This is the Welcome to New Mexico Sign


and the Welcome to Texas


The weather has continued hot and humid with highs each day in the 90’s, it certainly doesn’t make me feel too energetic! Our site backing onto the river is really nice and there are lots of trees behind us, one being a large live oak tree with branches almost on the ground.

There are no wildflowers here in Hill Country this year as they had a very dry winter. It is disappointing but we are so thankful we were here last year to enjoy the bumper crop. Here are some pictures of last years' beautiful wildflowers.












Tuesday we went to San Marcos, home of Premier and Tangier outlet malls; sure lots of shopping to be done there!! There were only a few places I wanted to go to so I did that while John patiently bided his time waiting for me. It was then off to the Olive Garden for a yummy lunch and a day wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Wal Mart. By the time we got home we were glad to come in, turn on the a/c and relax.

Wednesday we toured the Lyndon B. Johnson ranch and Texas White House as it was known when he was President. The Johnson’s donated about 600 acres of their land, including the house, to the National Park on the condition that the house would be their private residence until they had both passed away. Lady Bird passed away in 2007 so the house and a couple of the outbuildings are now open for tours. We toured the property in 2008 but the house wasn’t open for tours at that time so there is now more to see and it was interesting to do the tour again. LBJ raised Herefords and at the livestock area they had a mother and a two month old calf in a pen and a bull that was two years old and weighed 1900 lbs.

Bull


Calf


And Mom


At the hangar we saw the plane he used to travel back and forth between Washington and Texas,

as well as a number of cars he owned, and it was at the hangar we started the tour of the house.





When he became president there were no private telephone lines in this part of Texas, they were all party lines, but he had 72 private lines installed into the house so he could carry on his work as he would in Washington. There were phones everywhere in the house with one installed on the leg of the dining room table – talk about always being on call!! Guess he would have loved the cell phones of today. There were also TV’s everywhere, usually 3 in one place and when in residence he had them on all the time.

After the tour we went into Fredericksburg where we both got hair cuts then went to HEB and picked up a cooked chicken and potato salad for dinner.

Yesterday we drove north to Marble Falls and I got a pedicure, sure felt good. A quick stop at HEB and we were back home around 3 for a quiet rest of the day.

We are heading into Johnson City shortly so I had best get changed and ready to go.

And so ends more great gifts of days and we look forward to more good days to come.