town. 
To our surprise, there were several high
end dollar cars sitting between the restaurant and the hotel. They were a Lamborghini (orange), a Corvette (yellow), a Bentley (white), a Ferrari (yellow) and a Viper (maroon). I couldn't believe that the Viper was dirty. All the others were spotless. The engine to the Ferrari could be seen in the rear window. Apparently they liked the VW style of rear engine. Who knew!!
Then we headed for the LBJ ranch. It is both a Federal and a State Park. I was anxious to see all the wild
flowers in bloom. Big disappointment there. With little or no rain this spring, the flowers were not in full bloom. There were a few hardy ones but not like I've seen in the pictures of the place. We took the tour bus around the ranch for about 2 hours. Our first stop was the reconstructed home of his birth place. We got out and walked up to the house and saw the rooms from the door ways. It had a dogtrot between rooms as most houses did in this period. The family moved to Johnson City where he went to school and grew up. A short walk from the home is the family cemetary. All of his family is buried there. A beautiful bouquet of silk wildflowers was on Lad
y Bird Johnson's grave. A formal headstone is suppose to be set this summer. In the far background, you can see the church that the President and his family attended, the Trinity Lutheran Church. I took a closer picture of it because it is so pretty. Services are still held there.We boarded the bus and traveled to the Texas White House (of the 60's). They were cele
brating the 60's this weekend with a fashion show (which I missed because it was Friday with high school kids), speakers and cars of that era. 
The home was beautiful with georgeous oak trees surrounding it. The picture wi
th the tree swing is the veiw out the front of this house and it overlooks the Pedernales River that the president dearly loved. Reverend Billy Graham said in his eulogy to President Johnson, "No one could ever understand Lyndon Johnson unless they understood the land and the people from which he came." From all the we heard on audio tapes on the bus and we read in his exhibit center, the land truly rejuvenated him when he came home to it.These cars from the 60's were really neat cars and very clean looking. I'm sure you're all as curious as I was about the Studebaker.
It was a '61 Hawk. Pretty cool. From here we toured around the rest of the ranch. As part of the agreement to donate this land for a park, the President requested that it remain a working ranch. There are about 120 to 140 head of cattle, Herefords, on the ranch most of the time. They have maintained the 60's style of cattle which to my untrained eye, meant short horns and stocky cattle. Not sure how you do this without a lot of inbreeding, but I'm sure there's a way.
The las
t stop was the Sauer-Beckmann Farm. This is a fully functioning farm from the 1915 to 1918 era. Lyndon Johnson would have been about 7 or 9 at this 
time and these would be his memories. These were, in fact, his neighbors at the time of his birth. This fa
rm provides all of it's food. There is a vegitable garden, chickens, hogs and a milk cow. The employees wear period clothes and eat lunch 
from what ever the farm is producing at the time. There is a smoke house and it still has food in it from this last fall. We got there around 4 and milking time (and closing time) was around 4:30 so I got there in time to get a photo of the milking.We did some geo caching on the way back, but I'll save that for tomorrow's posting.
When we got back to town, we decided to eat at the Silver Creek Restaurant. It has an open area right on the street. Larry finally got a Snitzel but, once again, I ventured out. I had an 8 oz free range chicken breast marinated in maple syrup and a pecan brown butter sauce poured over it. Very, very good. I would order that again in a heart beat. Then for dessert, we jaywalked across the street to the Blue Bell Ice Cream store.
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