LBJ Library & Museum & Johnson City

Sat, March 12th - Mon, March 14th

Leaving Fredericksburg, we stopped in Johnson City. President Johnson was born near here in the home of his grandparents near the Pedernales River. This is the first home of his grandparents. They later sold this home to his uncle who gave the land to start Johnson Settlement. The Johnson family has lived here in Texas Hill Country since the 1870s.

When he was five his family moved to this home in town and he spent the next ten years in Johnson City.


This is part of the original homestead. This guy looked really big and kind of mean and the fence didn't look that strong.




We are spending a few days with John's cousin near Austin. After relaxing for a day, we headed into Austin on Monday to see the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum on the University of Texas campus. It is 10 stories high. The entrance is on the third floor. The third, fourth and tenth floors have exhibits for the public.


Going from the third floor to the fourth, you can look up and see some of the stored papers. There are 45 million pages of historical documents, 650,000 photos, one million feet of motion picture film and 5,000 hours of recordings from his public career and those of his associates. He was 12 years in the House, 12 years in the Senate, Vice President, tragically took over as President and served another term of his own.

This is a view from the 10th floor. There are 12 presidential libraries and Johnson's is the only one that is free, per his wishes.



I didn't know the first ladies were not always referred to as first ladies. Johnson started out as a teacher in a poor Mexican school. He never forgot the poverty and spent his whole public life trying to pass bills to help people of lesser means.


Next year we will stop at the ranch and cemetery and Lady Bird's wildflowers at the LBJ National Historical Park between Fredericksburg and Johnson City. Before sunset we walked along the river in downtown Austin. We saw several groups of team rowers and lots of other canoers, joggers and bikers.


Under the Congress Ave. Bridge tourists were gathering to watch the bats as they fly out from there home under the bridge for their nightly feeding. In the summer there are over a million every night.




Another beautiful day!







Austin City sky line. You can see the Capitol on the far left.


Tarra

Luckenbach & Fredericksburg, Texas

Wed, March 9th - Fri, March 12th

Our first afternoon in Fredericksburg we took a short drive to check out the infamous Luckenbach of "Waylon and Willie and the boys". A friend of Willie's, Hondo Crouch, bought the whole town in 1971. Not that it's much of a town.

In the front part of the old post office is a gift shop. In the back in a kind of lean-to addition is a bar with all sorts of funky memorabilia. Out back under the oak tree some good old boys were playing. There is usually live music most days.

Also out back are the bathrooms with tin roof, more memorabilia, graffiti and fabric draw curtains on the stalls. It was established as a trading post in 1849 and enjoys continued notoriety for it's free spirit and unique events.

Inside another old run-down building is this very nice dance hall, where they have dances most weekends. Willie is going to play for the 4th of July celebration this year. You can rent the dance hall or the whole town if you want. They will line up caterers and bands for your event if you wish. They can even get Willie for you, if you can afford him.

We spent Thursday afternoon and all day Friday at the National Museum of the Pacific War. It is the only institution in the continental U.S. dedicated exclusively to telling the story of the Pacific War campaigns. Admiral Chester Nimitz, head of the Pacific theater in WWII, was born in Fredericksburg and grew up here helping out in his grandfather's hotel. Part of the museum is in the old hotel besides this whole new complex, memorial gardens and wall, Japanese garden, book store and two quonset buildings and outdoor area set up to look like a pacific island with base and battlefield where they do re-enactments of battles.

Above is a picture of the memorial to all the presidents from Roosevelt thru H.W. Bush who were involved in WWII in some way, either as president or serving in the military at the time. H.W. was the youngest fighter pilot in the war at the time, 18, and the only one on his plane to survive when they were shot down.

The above plane is one of the Japanese planes that bombed Pearl Harbor. This is a Japanese garden that is next to the memorial gardens and wall.

This is trully an excellent museum, but after a day and a half seeing it all, I was starting to get museum burnout. Fredericksburg is a German community named after Prince Frederick of Prussia. They have Oktoberfest celebrations and lots of German restaurants. We tried one and enjoyed it very much and picked up some of their local beer before we left town. There is also a pioneer museum with a dozen old buildings covering a couple of blocks and several other points of interest, but we will have to save it for next time.

Over and out,

Tarra

Pecos, Ft. Stockton, Ft. Lancaster, Ozona, Sonora & Junction, Texas

Sat, March 5th - Tue, March 8th


Saturday we stopped in Pecos for lunch and a walk around town. They claim to have had the first rodeo here in 1883. They are also famous for the cantalope they raise here. Since the 1880s people such as Helen Keller, Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson have ordered them along with exclusive clubs in Chicago, New York, St. Louis and other cities. There is a museum in the old hotel across from the train station downtown. Next to the museum is a replica of Judge Roy Bean's place in Langtry.




We drove on to Fort Stockton where we spent the night in the Walmart parking lot. We went for a long walk around town. They have a really nice visitor center in the original 1911 Kansas City, Mexico and Orient railway depot. There is a train car next to it and an oil rig and old windmill out front. On either side there are metal cutout sculptures of the Comanches, soldiers, pioneers, vaqueros and a fountain from the original Comanche Springs. They have a swimming pool in town where they have been having water carnivals since 1938. It was fed by a spring that produced 65 million gallons a day. We walked thru the historic downtown and the old fort which still has all of it's buildings. Pecos County is one of the most prolific oil and gas producing counties in Texas since 1900. Since 1926 over 710 million barrels of oil had been produced as of a 1973 sign. We saw our first apple tree in full bloom here and have seen lots since then. Springs a comin'.

On Sunday we took a scenic detour off I-10 and by accident stumbled on Ft. Lancaster, which we had never heard of. It was mostly in ruins, but they had a small museum including a stagecoach and covered wagon. It was a beautiful day to walk around the ruins and enjoy the scenery. This agave, or century plant, was next to the parking lot. It takes them twenty some years to bloom and they bloom once and die. The heart of the agave plant is cooked down to make tequila. The Apaches used to make a type of beer and mescal from it, thus the name Mescalero Apache.

Moving on, this is the courthouse in Ozona. The monument out front has Davy Crockett on it with the inscription "Be sure you are right and go ahead". Ozona is in Crockett County. We have noticed that several of the counties are named after people who died at the Alamo.

How long has it been since you have seen a tire swing? These two were in a yard just across the street from the courthouse.

This is the courthouse at Sonora. Texas towns, and especially their courthouse squares, tend to have lots of historic markers. This one had over twenty lined up along the sidewalk just behind me telling of all the people and families that settled here and built the town.

In Sonora we hiked some of the trails in the Eaton Hills Wildlife Sanctuary which overlooks the town. Along the Dry Devil's Trail we saw these remains which I presume are the result of someone's sense of humor.

We stayed in Junction, Texas Monday and Tuesday nights in the city park right next to the dam on the Llano River. It was beautiful and you can camp there three nights for free. As we were wandering around downtown an older gentleman stopped us and asked if we needed any directions. He proceeded to tell us about points of interest in the area. John asked him something about Coke Stevenson who is from Junction. He was a legislator and the governor and lost an election against Lyndon Johnson by a very slim margin when it was claimed that a lot of the votes for Johnson were made by dead people. The saying goes that when a young boy was asked why he was crying, he said his dead father had come back to vote for Johnson and he didn't even stop to see him. It turns out the man we were visiting with is a lawyer and had at one time worked with Coke Stevenson. Junction is also where Bear Bryant brought his football players in by bus to train when he felt the parents were interfering too much with his training program. There was a movie made about it, Junction Boys starring Tom Berringer.

This boulder right across the river from our RV is where there was a Confederate Veteran's Reunion in 1908 for vets from both sides who were living in the region to bring Americans together to remember, honor and heal past differences. This boulder deposited by the Alta Vista Mountains served as the speakers platform. There was flooding at the time and people had to be ferried across the river on an overhead tram.

This tree of antlers was in front of a meat processing place and had been there since the 1960s.

We walked all around town. Some parts of the town are very junky and run down. I especially liked this place, because there was no junk around. It was just very simple and rustic, pretty much stress free I would think.

On to Fredericksburg tomorrow.

Tarra

Guadalupe Mountains National Park & Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Thur, March 3rd - Fri, March 4th

We did some hiking in the Guadalupe Mountains where there are 80 miles of hiking trails, and spent the night in the park campground. This is a soap tree yucca. It is a member of the lily family and it is New Mexico's state flower. I think we have seen millions of them the last few days driving from Arizona, thru New Mexico into Texas.

This is a cholla cactus in front of the remants of an old stage coach station. Guadalupe Peak is 8,749 feet. The mountains were a coral reef 265 million years ago and like swiss cheese, they have holes throughout.

These are mostly banana yuccas, so called because of the banana-like fruit they produce.

Friday we headed down the bat cave at Carlsbad. This is the seating in front of the cave where you can sit at sunset from May to October and watch as 300,000 to 1.8 million bats leave the cave. Now they have 100 to 200, but we didn't stay till sunset to see them.

We headed down the very steep paved trail into the cave. It is 1.25 miles down and takes an hour to hike the 750 feet (seventy five stories). You can take the elevator down, but we chose to hike it. You are not allowed to hike out. You have to take the elevator.

As we got down in a ways, we lost all natural light. I can't imagine what it must have been like for the first explorers who went in with candles, matches and lanterns.

The first young man, 16 years old, made a ladder out of sticks and barb wire to get down from one section of the cave to the next. His name was James White and he discovered the cave when he saw a cloud of bats leaving. He couldn't convince anyone else to go down with him, so he explored it by himself for some time, until he finally convinced a photographer to come down and take some pictures. Once the pictures got around, the people started coming.

Bat guano was mined and pulled out of the cave in a big barrel. When tourists first started coming, they were lowered down two at a time in the guano bucket for their tour. It was powered by a gas engine and the brake was merely a board jammed in the flywheel.

The cave temperature is 56 degrees year-round. We were there at 8:30 when they opened and did the hike down and the big room self-guided tour.
We went back to the camper for lunch and did the king's palace guided tour after lunch. We hiked six miles in the caves and we were here until closing at 5:00.


They also have several tours you can go on that require you to bring flashlights. Knee pads and gloves are recommended. Hard hats are furnished and you crawl thru some very tight spaces. Down at the bottom by the big room they have restrooms, gift shop and beverages for sale.

In 1931 they built two elevators. In 1955 they built two bigger and more modern elevators. Today there are four elevators that travel nine miles an hour making the trip in 54 seconds. They run an average of 23,000 miles every year.

There is a bigger cave system nearby that is not open to the public. It is only open to explorers and researches. So far they have explored 130 miles of caves there. Until recently it was the fifth largest cave system in the world. It is now sixth with the discovery of a larger one in Mexico.

We both thought the caverns were one of the best things we have ever done. They are really very cool.

More tomorrow,

Tarra

Wilcox, Az. & Chiricahua National Monument

Mon, Feb. 28th - Wed, March 2nd

Leaving Mesa on Monday, we spent the next two nights in Wilcox, Az. We had a nice Texas BBQ lunch in this old train car. Right across the street was a plaque that said the youngest Earp brother, Warren, was shot and killed right here in the Headquarters Saloon on July 6, 1900.

A couple doors down we went to the Rex Allen (Sr.) Museum and Wilcox Cowboy Hall of Fame. You have to be older than dirt, almost as old as me, to remember Rex Allen and his horse, Koko. Rex was in 39 episodes as the Frontier Doctor and did over 100 nature films for Disney. Koko co-starred in 30 motion pictures and traveled over half a million miles with Rex. Entrance fee was $3.00 per couple.

This is one of the displays. They also showed one of his movies, which was kind of fun to sit down and watch. There was all kinds of memorabilia of old western stars such as Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Johnny Cash, Elvis and Rex's sidekick, Slim Pickens.

Right across the street there is a memorial to Rex and his horse. Koko is actually buried there. Next door to Rex's museum is a museum for Marty Robbins. It cost us $1.00 each. Marty is actually from Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, but his fan club president was from Wilcox, so she put his museum here. Marty was the first country singer to get a grammy and wrote over 500 songs and had 14 #1 hits.

We camped at the Elk's Club campground which was right on the edge of town. I decided to go for a little hike out in the desert. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon the old city cemetery. I thought, how cool, I can get some neat old pictures.

As I was wandering around, I came across the grave of Warren Earp way back in the corner. Some conscientious citizens had put up a very nice grave marker for him. Most of the other markers were tipped over or broken.

Wednesday we headed up to Chiricahua National Monument and Mountain Wilderness Area to do some hiking and exploring. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was great.

There was snow, but it was so nice we didn't even need a jacket.

It was known by the Apaches as "The Land of Standing Up Rocks". Near here is Cochise Stronghold where the Apaches hid out from the army and it is believed the hidden tomb of Cochise is located.

As usual John is waiting for me to catch up. I am always so busy taking photos, but I just can't help it when the surroundings are so incredible.

All the snow made me miss all the wonderful ski trips I used to go on with friends and family. I hope I get a chance to go again sometime.

I just love hiking wilderness trails.

No wonder the Apaches could hide out in here.

Within the National Monument is Faraway Ranch. It was originally homesteaded by a couple whose son was an engineer and was in charge of the CCC building the 17 miles of hiking trails here. The heirs turned it into a guest ranch and eventually donated it to the park in the 70s. You can see the cement pond they built behind the house where they pumped water up from the creek, so guests could swim. We went on a ranger guided tour of the house which is exactly as they left it with all the original furnishings and possessions including a quilt on the bed from Sweden that was a wedding gift to the couple that originally homesteaded here.

More tomorrow,

Tarra