All the Way with LBJ just don't forget JFK

I forgot to mention something interesting that we saw here in Bandera. When we drover here from Canyon Lake, we passed by a ranch that had a herd of zebra grazing out by the road. While we were here, several people asked if we had seen the “animals” along the road. Well, over the weekend we did. We left the campground headed for town and came to an immediate halt less than a quarter mile from the entrance of our park. There grazing by the gate of the ranch next door was a wilderbeast. We stopped in abject amazement. Then out of the woods came a zebra and some kind of gazelle or antelope. Just behind them was a small herd of about 8 more zebra and several more of the antelope (the kind with the sweeping horns about 5 feet long sloping back from their heads). Rumor has it there is an elephant back there too although we never saw it. There is a kind of deer that only grew in India (the name escapes me at the moment). Several of them were brought to Texas and raised on ranches here. Several years ago, there was a serious flood in this area and many of these animals got loose and have become wild. I was told that there were now more of these deer (Axis Deer) in Texas than there were in India. The weather here is perfect for raising these exotic animals and there are a lot of them on ranches around here. It is really funny to run into these circus or zoo animals just grazing along the sides of the road.

That’s all for now. We still haven’t moved so I will save this and add to it when there is something to say. Bye for now!

It was a pleasant drive over here from Bandera. I can honestly say that Bandera was the first place that I have been really sorry to leave. We drove through what is known as the Texas hill country. It is rolling hills and is just beautiful. We found some pretty towns like Fredericksburg, a town built by German Immigrants. We saw some really nice houses and ranches although most of the large ranches are still so far off the road that all you see is the archways that mark the beginnings of the driveways. I should have made an effort to photograph some of these archways as they would have made an interesting collection of pictures much like the collages of doorways you see in New England. Each one of these entry arches is unique. Many carry the name of the ranch and/or the owner but many also carry some form of western art. Cut steel art has been popular in this area.

Like our Strawberry Festival Flags we display every June, Bandera had these cut steel ovals hung from every pole throughout the downtown area. They were striking and everyone was different showing scenes from the old west. Cattledrives, roping, bullriding and bronco busting were common themes but the daily life of cowboys and the cattle drive theme was common.

We found our campground after a couple of accidental side trips. The instructions to get there were pretty thin and not very good. Texas is such a big place; the maps are not very detailed. We ended up relying on the computer to find our way and some of the road numbers were missing on the computer (we use Delormes program, without the GPS satellite reader because we forgot it). Fortunately there is not a lot of traffic in this part of the country because we had to back up on the main road to get down the roads we needed to go on. One time we took the wrong road completely but there were plenty of other roads to correct the problem.

Soon we found Kingsland and moved to the directions in the Coast to Coast book. They said to take the road behind the Wells Fargo Bank but didn’t tell us that you can’t see the bank until you are in front of it and have already missed the turn. Fortunately, there is a really tight (for 58 feet of vehicle) turn on the other side of the bank that does meet up with the road. The Campground is a small tight place but is very nice. There is a trailer park at the beginning but then the road opens into the campground. It is located right on Lake LBJ another lake formed by damming up a river. The lake runs all the way from here down to Austin some 21 miles. It is a pretty lake but like most dammed up lakes it is long and narrow. This town’s economy seems to be mostly tourism and with the passing of Labor Day, it is pretty quiet around here.

They suggested that our space was big enough to put our trailer on the site with us and park next to it. The problem, other than the tightness of the campground in general, was that the utility post was in the wrong place. If we backed in, it was on the wrong side of the camper and if we drove in it was at the wrong end of the camper. When I tried to put the trailer on the side, I ran into tree branches that prevented me from putting the trailer where I wanted it. There was a place to put the trailer but the only empty space was not where I could get at it. They suggested that I drop the trailer in the road and they would move it to a storage place. That worked but I still had the problem of placing the camper. The first try put me where the connections wouldn’t fit so I turned it around. I could get things to fit but only by placing the camper where I had no front patio area. I compromised. I had quite a bit of space so I put the camper in diagonally. The rear was close to the utility post and the front was right on the boundary on the other side of my camper. Even with that, the sewer hose barely fit. It is stretched to its maximum but I do have enough space to put out my awning and put a picnic table there.

We do look strange at the angle we are at. I don’t know how people set up here. Nothing is in the right place. We are just up from the lake and right across the street from the rec hall and the pool. There is no beach here but people swim off the docks. The rec hall has a large screen TV with premium channels and a pool table. We played pool last night and watched Talladega Nights on Starz. The pool table is not quite level and all the adult size cues are broken and there are 2 balls missing but we had a great time. We had the whole place to ourselves.

We originally booked this place for 5 nights to see what was going to happen in New Orleans but they way things are going over there, we may not get the chance to go there. I changed our booking here to 7 nights and figure we will head up towards Dallas then Oklahoma and Arkansas or over to North Louisiana and Mississippi before hitting Memphis. We have all week to figure that out. At first, we planned weeks in advance to get the reservations in the places that are hard to go to (Mesa Verde and Grand Canyon) and then filled in around them. In the post Labor Day world, we can pretty much go where we want to. It is not like New England where things start to fold up right after Labor Day.

Cable TV is a bad influence. We sat up way too late last night watching shows that we haven’t seen since we left; mostly the food channel. We are still out of sorts with the TV scheduling since we are in a different time zone and the cable channels maintain their EDST timing.

We did watch some of the convention last night. I wanted to see Gov. Palin’s speech and learn a little more about her. It sounded a lot like her speech when she was introduced a few days ago. I am a Democrat. I have been one since I was young and looking for an outlet for my activism wanting to “change to world” and was forced to be a Democrat by the South Berwick Republicans who liked the world just the way it was and had no room in the Grand Old Party for any rash young people looking to “improve” things. We first looked towards the Republicans since we grew up in a highly republican town and we all “liked Ike”.

Following our rebuke by the Republicans (they ran things and weren’t willing to welcome anyone new), we then attended the Democratic Party Meeting and found 4 people, most of them over 75 years of age. They seemed glad to see anyone new attend their meeting and by the end of the evening, we controlled the South Berwick Democratic Party. Here was our platform to work from. We were enthralled with Gene McCarthy and the changes he talked about. We loved his plan to change things in both the party and the country but like McCain in the last 2 elections, he wanted more changes than the party was willing to accept and he was torpedoed by the party itself who chose party regular Hubert Humphrey to carry the banner.

The fact that Humphrey chose Ed Musky for his running mate brought us back into the fold after the McCarthy debacle. We worked hard for the party ticket and even did some work for local candidates. We got a storefront (the old A&P) and set up an office to work from. It was a great time to be young and made us realize that you have a better chance to change things working from the inside than from the outside.

That is how I got to be a Democrat but I have always felt that I would vote for the best person rather than whomever the Democrats put up. It was easy to be a Democrat at first with Ken Curtis as Governor and Ed Muskie as our elder Senator. Over the years, however the quality candidates became more equal and the state even elected an Independent Governor. Now we have a pair of superb Republican Senators in Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. I have liked them for a while. Both have drawn the ire of our Republican President since they study issues for themselves and decide how to vote based on common sense rather than the party line.

This is all a roundabout way to talk about the conventions. I watched parts of both conventions. I am not sure when politics got so confrontational. Candidates have always pointed out their own strong points and the other candidates differing views on each issue but in the last few elections, it has gotten truly nasty. Starting with Newt Gingridge (spelling is wrong I am sure) if you don’t support the party, you are an enemy of the country. I thought the Democrats had a great convention. They developed a party solidarity and pushed their presidential candidates talking about the upcoming election and the changes they want to make over the Bush policies of the last 8 years. The Republican convention however seemed to do nothing but run down the personalities of the Democratic Candidates and use scare tactics to tell how they will destroy the country and make laughing stocks of Americans all over the world. They told us how O’bama wasn’t qualified for the job even after being a Senator but that Sarah Palin was qualified to be president if something happened to McCain.

OK, that’s enough. I do not dislike McCain and I do not think that Obama is the complete answer to everything we as a country need. Nixon did not destroy the country and neither has George Bush so we can survive with either one. They both have an opportunity to sway me. Bring it on!

We drove over to Sunset Beach and checked out the neighborhood. It is an interesting place on the shore of Lake LBJ. There are a lot of canals which allow people 2 streets back from the lake to have access to the lake. Each lot on these canals has a dock and a boathouse. The roads were narrow and went basically nowhere except to the canals around the lake. We ran into herds of those smallish deer that we saw in Canyon Lake. In one place, there was a man on a ladder working on the light over his garage door and there were 3 deer grazing on his lawn.

We looked around town for a smoked meat shop that we were both sure we had seen here in town. We drove through town several times (it isn’t that big) and didn’t see a sign of the place. We must have seen it somewhere else. We did stop at the DQ and had a sundae. That was pretty refreshing. Then we went over to the quilt shop and Cheryl made arrangements to use their sewing machine to assemble a quilt she has been working on this trip. She has been worried about finding a place that would let her use their machine but there was no problem.

Then we did some grocery shopping. They have a HEB Store here in Kingsland but it is much smaller than the other ones we have experienced along the way. We found pretty much everything we needed and a few things we wanted but the selection was smaller and there was no deli or bakery.

Today we got up and hit the road early. The handy man here told us last night that he would be shutting our electricity down about 6 to rewire some of the utility towers on the sites. We got up around 6:30 and found the electricity still on. We got ready and headed out. We didn’t want to run anything electric in case the power went out so we decided to eat on the road. We found a place called the New Orleans restaurant over in Round Mountain and figured this might be the closest we will get to New Orleans so we stopped there to eat. We met a man there who makes rocking chairs and was out on the road delivering some orders. His chairs are heavy rustic wood. He had double rockers and double swing chairs in addition to regular rustic rockers. We talked with him for quite a while. He loves the Texas Hill Country (as does about everyone else we have met here).

Following Breakfast, we headed on to Johnson City. We passed another ranch with exotic animals. This one offered public tours (safaris) by appointment. Soon we pulled into Johnson City and immediately drove right by the road we were looking for. We were looking for a couple of places and missed them all. It didn’t take long to realize our mistake and we corrected it. Johson City is the home of the Johnson Family, the most famous member of which is Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife Ladybird. We stopped at the Visitor Center and were told by a ranger at the door that there was a tour starting in 2 minutes over at the Johnson’s Boyhood Home. We headed across the street and toured the house. It was in great condition.

I am always amazed when I tour old historical houses especially those of famous (& rich) people. It always seems that they have little. Each bedroom had an amoire that was the only closet and a small bureau. The kitchens are always devoid of gadgets and have simple kitchen tools. The houses are small. There is little room for the mountains of stuff that we all seem to feel are necessary. The house had 3 basic wings that were only one room deep to allow ventilation in the heat of the summer. There was also a large rear porch where everyone slept in the summer. They did have a small 3 burner gas stove that they took outside in the summer to keep the heat out of the house. Inside they had a wood kitchen stove which did the cooking and heated part of the house. There was also a pot bellied stove in their parent’s bedroom.

That bedroom had a double purpose. Lyndon’s father was relegated to that bedroom when he had visits from his farmer and political buddies. His wife did not want his rantings, bad language and back room planning to affect the children so he was relegated to the bedroom. There was a transom over the door to let out the cigar smoke and that room had a porch all of its own. Unfortunately, keeping the children away from the men didn’t work. On the end of the building, there was a door into the crawl space underneath the house and Lyndon used to crawl into that space underneath his father’s bedroom to listen to the political talk. It was here that he got his love of the political process and the intrigue that went with it.

There was a windmill that pumped water into a raised tank to provide water in the house. There was an outhouse that was way on the other side of the yard (wouldn’t you put it as far from the house as you could?). Of course it was on the corner of 2 streets. There was also a smoke house that is now a shed and a barn.

We saw films about Lyndon and Ladybird outlining their lives and their careers. I knew a lot about Ladybird’s life in the Whitehouse and the programs that she promoted but I connected LBJ’s Presidency with Viet Nam and really couldn’t see past that. The information at the Visitor’s Center told me a lot about Johnson’s Presidency. He was an important player in the Civil Rights battle and was responsible for passing much of the 60s legislation. Among the other important programs were the battle against poverty, improvements to education and many other things that were important. Not all of the programs were unqualified successes but they did move all of the programs forward.

The information also showed how much Johnson was pained by the whole Viet Nam thing. He felt that the only thing he could do to try to resolve the problem was not give up running for his second term. Ho Chi Min would not come to the table with Johnson regardless of the concessions that Johnson made so the only way out was to let someone else deal with him. There was also a village down a path were Johnson’s Grandparents lived. This was a collection of buildings that made up the elder Johnson’s farm.

After this, we headed down the road to the LBJ Ranch. His ranch was not only beautiful but was an important place in the history of the country during the Johnson Presidency. He had made several additions to the original house. One of these additions was called the Texas White House. Johnson spent considerable time here during his presidency but they were often working times. He entertained world leaders at the ranch and at one time or another had political allies and his cabinet there for sessions to develop important legislation. There is a group of chairs and a big round table under a huge live oak tree in the front yard of the ranch house that was famous for its meetings. He would often gather groups of Senators and Representatives there to hammer out compromises to legislation.

There is a large runway on the ranch and a hanger. There is a small house by the hanger that was the main office of the Secret Service at the ranch. There is also a collection of Johnson’s cars. It includes several Lincoln’s, a 1940 Ford Convertible, the oversized golf cart that he gave tours around the ranch in and the unique Amphicar, a convertible amphibian car that drives along the road and can slide right into a body of water and become a boat. They told us that he used to scare the daylights out of people around the ranch when he drove down to a body of water and just drove in. It was blue. I remember that someone around South Berwick had one. I saw them drive into Lee’s Mills one day. It was pretty amazing.

They had a reconstruction of the house that Lyndon was born in. It was not open as there was some renovation going on. It seems that the rope across the doorway to keep people out of the building itself while allowing them to see inside it was not enough. Children would go under the rope and touch the items in the rooms. They were putting Plexiglas across the doorways. We did talk to the gentleman who was doing the repairs. He seemed to want to talk about the house and the area. It was a pleasant interlude as there was no one around. Most of the people who came were met by a ranger in the parking lot who points you to the cemetery and then explains that the house is not open for viewing but you can wander around the grounds.

The cemetery is beautiful. Lyndon and Ladybird are both buried there. As much as he loved the ranch, it is impossible to think of him being buried anywhere else. Ladybird does not have a stone yet, someone said that the heirs cannot agree on design for the stone. Ladybird once found a pillow that she immediately bought for Lyndon and gave him. It is a light green (or was before it faded) and had the words “This is My Ranch and I do What I Damn Well Please!” The story goes that she was a little worried about what Lyndon would think but that was dispelled when he just loved it. That pillow was always on display in the ranch and still sits in the Texas White House Office. His daughter is quoted as saying if the ranch were on fire, that pillow would be the first thing that Lyndon would grab.

We were fortunate on several fronts. First, the Texas White House Office has only been open to the public for a week. Up until now, the house has been off limits to visitors. This room is now open and there are plans in the future for other parts of the house to be opened.

We drove into Fredericksburg to find something to eat. Fredericksburg is a town built by German Immigrants. There are several German Restaurants but we were on a mission. When we had come through town a few days before, we had seen a place that advertised Smoked Meats so we had to find it. We searched the road out of town with no success so we turned around and checked out the road coming into town. We found the place. It was a factory with a store of its own. We went in and were immediately confused by the place. We thought it would be a restaurant or at least a place where you can buy meat and get something to eat. WRONG!!

They did have lots of smoked meats for sale and lots of German goodies like mustards, sauerkrauts, pickled most everything (but pastries the best things Germans have to offer). We tried a couple of offerings and bought smoked turkey and beef and some takeout hot goodies. Cheryl had a Brat and I had a beef sausage with jalapenos (and spicy mustard). They were very tasty but the knotted part of the casing was very hard to eat.

We headed out of town again but felt that we hadn’t found a pastry shop yet so I did another U-turn (in the same place) and once again headed back into town. We parked and checked out a couple of places (one was closed (Thurs?)) and settled on a lunch counter kind of place with an ice cream case and a pastry case. We split a Reuben and then a turtle brownie. After the brownie, we bought a Crocodile, a pastry roll with a filling kind of like pecan pie and a drizzle of maple glazing on top.

We wanted to try something else but weren’t hungry any longer. We finished our coffee and headed back to camp. We took the right route this time. It was another route and was also a scenic highway.

Another day has dawned. We headed down to Austin to visit the LBJ Library. It is located on the University of Texas campus. We checked to make sure they were playing football at home and they weren’t. It was a good thing. The LBJ Library is right next to the football stadium. The library is a great visit. It is a 10 story building with the public areas on Floors 3, 4 and 10. The first floor holds the theater where they show the LBJ movie. It is a nice cross section of his career. The rest of the floor is a timeline of his public life. It shows all of the things that happened during his public career. The 10th floor covers life in the White House and has a nice exhibit about Lady Bird and her public life.

There is a mock up of Johnson’s oval office and pictures of many of the rooms in the White House. The 4th floor covers his involvement with the space program. Jack Kennedy assigned Johnson to oversee the space program and the race to the moon. There was also an exhibit of examples of Johnson’s humor. Johnson is represented by an animatronic figure that tells stories of his years in public office and other stories. There were also many of the gifts that the Johnson’s received during their White House years.

There was an exhibit regarding his rise to the presidency following Jack Kennedy’s assassination. There was a second exhibit in the 60s section with busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. This exhibit really affected me. I had to walk away and sit for a few minutes. It was very emotional. They always talk about remembering where you were when you heard about Jack Kennedy’s assassination but I also remember where I was when both of the other assassinations happened. I was watching the California returns when Bobby Kennedy was shot. I sat up all night watching that one. It seems like we had more than our share of tragedy during the 60s and I don’t know about you but all three of these events affected me.

As we left, we walked down into the campus. It was strangely quiet. I don’t know much about Texas but we didn’t see much going on and very few people. There was a great fountain outside the library. It consisted of several nozzles which shot straight up in the air and landed back in a pool that then ran over the edge into a lower area. Over the top of the fountain, we could see the tower where that gunman shot all those students many long years ago. That is another one of those things that you don’t forget.

We walked over to the stadium hoping to get a glance at it. It is a big stadium. Someone told me it seats 100,000 + people but I am not sure it looked that big. We checked out the Longhorn fan shop and walked around to the end where it is open. You could see the inside but a worker there that was hauling stuff out to the dumpster said we could go in and take some pictures. What a nice place. I am not sure about the orange motif but the field was nice.

By the time we finished, it was getting late and we were hungry. We set out for home (that is still a strange phrase but we are accepting it after 3 months) and found a place called Mimi’s Café. The food there was really good and not too expensive. They served muffins with each meal. They give you a basket of bread to open with and then serve you a muffin with the meal (?).

The drive back seemed much quicker than the drive down. We did stop at a Starbucks to get coffee and wandered down to the lake when we got here. We sat in a swing chair and watched these people trying to water ski behind a jet ski. They didn’t get very far and finally broke the Jet Ski. Then the guy’s daughter dropped the car keys in the water. It was a three ring circus but they did get the keys back (the girl wouldn’t go in to get them, she made her father go). They loaded the Jet Ski onto the trailer and figuring the circus was at an end, we headed back to the camper to watch Jeff Dunham. Jeff is a ventriloquist. If you have never seen Jeff, by all means rent one of his DVDs. There are 2. He has a group of characters he refers to as his Suitcase Posse. He is a very original comedian and is funny.

Well, tomorrow is on its way. Tomorrow is our 11th Anniversary. We will hit a church in the morning and take it easy in the afternoon. We will have a special cookout and a bottle of champagne which I brought for this very occasion. I will probably not write tomorrow. We do have to figure out where we are going next and make some reservations so we can order some medicine (as well as having somewhere to go). See ya!

It’s Monday. I was right, I didn’t write yesterday at all. We got up and headed over to Sunset Beach to go to church at the Sunset Beach Federated Church. We found this church on our wanderings and figured we would check it out. It turns out to be a federation of Presbyterian, Methodist and Disciples of Christ. They have a primary minister (Rev. Dr. John Alsup) that is a professor at the Austin Seminary who preaches on the first and third Sundays of the month. They have a student minister (Michael Lauziere from Massachusetts) from the Seminary who is responsible for the service on the second and fourth Sunday and for those months that there is a fifth Sunday, they have a guest minister. The Student Minister is usually there for 1 or 2 years. They do not get a different one every week, they have the same one for an entire year at least.

Rev. Dr. Alsup (seems like a rather large title for someone who wears a cowboy hat and boots) has a ranch with several horses. He had a bit of his sermon where he talked about having one of his horse tied to a hitching post while he brushed it. His cat was sitting on top of the hitching post. He felt that the horse was not paying enough attention to him and his ministrations and looked up. Both the horse and the cat were staring towards a gorgeous sunset. His first thought was that this sunset had been sent to them by God and he was not paying any attention. He then painted a picture of the three of them standing in a group watching the sunset.

Rev. Alsup is an older thin medium height gentleman with white hair, a meticulously manicured white beard and a black preacher gown (is this a cassock?) with a very old fashioned lace collar with a rectangular section approximately 3 x 5 hanging down from the collar. Add to this his black cowboy boots and you have a western preacher. He commented that they plan to add a hitching post in front of the church to signify that they have a traveling preacher man.

The people in the church were really nice. Rev. Alsup introduced us from the pulpit and everyone wanted to know whether we were visiting people in the area, what our trip was like, why do we ever go back to Maine for the winter (don’t we have that backwards?). After the service, they had a fellowship time with coffee and “stuff”. We pretty much closed that down. Rev Alsup the got ready to leave and added a white straw cowboy hat to his wardrobe and looked every bit the traveling preacher. All he needed was a horse tied up out front to get on to.

The organist was another traveling soul. There was a Baptist Church right next door that she also played at. One service is at 9 and the other at 10:45 so all she has to do is walk next door.

We did watch the NASCAR Race afterwards and keep track of the Pats game on the computer. I expected to be able to listen to the game because most of these radio stations now stream their programming over the computer but that was not to be. It seems that the NFL took a page out of Direct TVs book and now sells a package of all of the radio broadcasts from all of the teams. If you buy the package, you can listen to any radio broadcast of an NFL Game from either side of the game. It also means that none of the stations that broadcast NFL games can offer those games over the internet and they either leave the streaming outlet empty or program music that isn’t being broadcast over the airwaves.

Just as a note, we have listened to WHEB on many occasions as a touch of home. We have listened to the early morning show and the late afternoon show much as we do at home. It has seemed funny to be sitting out in a 120 degree desert listening to people talk about Portsmouth and Manchester. We have also listened to several NASCAR races over that station as we have not been able to get the radio broadcast anywhere we have been. When the cable stations take over the televising rights, the radio is the only relief and all we can do is hope that we have a connection on our wireless modem or whatever wifi is available. It hasn’t always worked out but then we write off the racing pretty much when we travel. We don’t even get the results on the TV or radio out here.

That is one gripe I have. Radio and TV stations out here seem to only provide scores and results of the teams in their areas. Our stations usually give results of all the professional and major college games but not out here. You had to buy a newspaper to get all of the scores. Cable TV would do the job but way fewer campgrounds had cable than I had planned and some campgrounds with cable only provided the local channels. I have tried 3 times to hook up the satellite dish on my camper but no one seems to want to do it. Camping World told me there would be no problem so I traveled to a campground just because there was a Camping World near it. First they tried to install a High Def receiver on my low def satellite dish which I figured out before they actually did the work (the mechanic caught it before he opened the box). Then they talked me out of doing it because they told me the dish was no good (reputation). There is a satellite dish place just outside the campground so I stopped in to talk to them. They didn’t even care what dish I had, they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. They only seemed to be interested in house installations. I give up. We only have 2 months (at most) left so we can put up with most anything.

Cheryl worked on her quilt much of the day and then we went out to dinner. It wasn’t a good restaurant; it was a take out kind of place that masqueraded as a restaurant. You put your order into a window and then waited watching (whether you wanted to or not) the Dallas Cowboys (I hate the Cowboys) kick the snot out of the Cleveland Browns with the sound turned up so loud you couldn’t find a quiet corner. We ate there but postponed our official anniversary dinner until we can find a more appropriate place (it was a choice between this place (which honestly looked like a nice restaurant) and the DQ which here is a sit in/eat in.

I spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out where to go next. Ike seems to be headed into the gulf with early predictions of New Orleans, Mississippi or eastern Texas so we reluctantly wrote off New Orleans and will head north. Of course, this gives us another place in Texas we can check out. We will stop at a campground about an hour outside of Dallas/Fort Worth before heading up into Oklahoma before heading east again into Arkansas and then into Memphis, Tennessee and probably Nashville. The next 2 stops are booked with the next 3 probables. Time is growing short and soon we will have to face the reality of coming home. We have accomplished most of what we wanted to do and will soon run out of Southwest. We never made it to Memphis so that will be new but Nashville is a return visit. We loved the area when we were there 2 years ago and will enjoy returning with a car which will greatly improve our mobility.

We went to Walmart this afternoon to dump my camera. On the way out, we stopped at a western wear place so Cheryl could look for another hat. She has been looking for a colored cowboy hat and has not been very lucky. When we saw them, she wasn’t sure she wanted one and now that she wants one, we can’t find any. She did see some at the festival in Bandera but the prices weren’t marked on them and the booth master kept telling her how nice the hat she already had was so she gave up. We haven’t seen any since and this place wasn’t any better.

We shifted gears and were looking at boots. They had a series of boots called “Fat Babies” that we had never run into before. They told us they were very popular and were quite colorful and unusual. They had thick rubber soles, medium rubber heels, and blunt toes and were very short compared to other cowboy boots. They were very colorful. Cheryl tried some on but didn’t like the way they fit. She has a problem with the upper part of her foot where it rolls up onto the leg. These didn’t help. Chris (the young man waiting on us (her)) measured her foot very carefully and decided that the shape of women’s boots and the compromises made in their design did not fit her foot. He measured her with a man’s measuring device and came up with a size in men’s boots that came closer to her foot’s measurement. The boots fit much better than the other ones. The addition of some half soles made the fit much better. He then suggested a line of handmade boots that they carried. He suggested that she try them just so she would know what a good fit was. He told us that once she put these boots on, she would never want to take them off. Once she got them on, she agreed. The agreement held up until she saw the price on the boots. They were nearly $400. That made them quite uncomfortable. My body bailed us out with a low blood sugar attack so we bailed to the BBQ place 2 doors down. I had the chicken and Cheryl had pulled pork with unsweetened tea and the appropriate sides. The chicken and pork were delicious and the sides were good. The sauce had some bite to it and was a thin tomato based sauce.

We drove back stopping at one of the dams that make Lake LBJ. There was a big sign telling us the dam was there but when we drove down to see it, it was all fenced off. There was also an RV park that had a big sign inviting people in to see the park (on the water). That also had a gate to keep out the people they had just invited in. We could have called them on the intercom but decided not to. There was an exclusive gated community right next door and their gate was invitingly open so we drove right in. The houses there were big, new and beautiful. Several were under construction. There was a canal that held boat houses and big decks and every one of the places was landscaped. We expected to be stopped by some security guru and thrown out but we weren’t. I have to assume that the gates were open to help the service people that were working on the houses under construction.

It was cloudy and the lake was rough and soon it was raining. We haven’t seen anything but an occasional thunderstorm (very occasional) since we left home.

Tomorrow is moving day so I will close now and upload this. See you on the other side.

Clayton