LBJ Ranch

We're still in Stonewall and still having a nice time. The temperature has cooled down a bit from last week. It has been in the 60's and 70's during the day and then downright cold at night. It's warming back up now. We plan to leave here on Monday and will begin working our way towards New Mexico again.

Today's blog post is all about our trip to the LBJ Ranch last week. This was a wonderful day trip. It is free to enter as LBJ wanted all of the sites connected to him to be accessible to everyone. His presidential library in Austin is the only presidential library which doesn't charge admission. There is a three dollar fee for taking the house tour though. We didn't tour the house but not because of the fee. It was a gorgeous day and we just didn't feel like being inside a house with a group of strangers.

When you first enter the park, you come to a very nice visitor center and gift shop.  They give you a pass to use as you drive around the ranch on a self-guided tour. There is a CD they lend you to use in your car which explains what you are seeing as you drive around the ranch. You can pause it at any time and get out and walk and explore. When you come to long open stretches of road, the CD plays music from the LBJ era like "Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head" and "Blowin In the Wind."  It was a really nice way to experience the park.

The LBJ Ranch is still a working ranch so there was a lot of wildlife and farm animals. The first stop on the tour didn't have much to do with LBJ but was still pretty cool. It was an old farmstead called a "living history" farm which presented farm life in 1918. Here are some pictures from the Sauer-Beckman Farm...

After leaving the farm, we began our drive around the ranch. This is one of the entrances to the ranch. LBJ use to like to take visiting dignitaries through this entrance and would then drive them through the Pedernales River.

This house belonged to LBJ's grandparents.

The next house is a replica of the home where LBJ was born. It is not the original house but it is located at the site where the house stood...

LBJ attended classes at this old schoolhouse for a short time. In 1965, he returned to this site to sign an important piece of legislation for education funding...

This is the Johnson Family Cemetery where both LBJ and Ladybird are buried and a blurry close-up of their graves...

After leaving the cemetery, you come to long open stretches of road as you drive through the ranch to get to LBJ's ranch house. It was a beautiful drive through the Texas countryside. Here are some random pictures of that stretch of the drive...

Next stop is LBJ and LadyBird's ranch house and the plane they used to fly from Austin to the ranch when LBJ was president. He called it Air Force One-Half...

The final two pictures are of a statue of LBJ that stands at the end of the tour. He is pointing at the ranch.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little tour of the LBJ Ranch. They have volunteer positions there that include an RV site so we may volunteer there some day. We love this area and the ranch is so beautiful and peaceful, we think it would be a great place to spend a few months.

 Thanks for stopping by!