There's no Jungle Room at the LBJ Ranch

Here's how nice people are in Austin: when I asked the guy at the bike rental place whether there were a lot of hills to ride to get to Mount Bonnell, he never once said that something called a Mount is likely to have hills involved.  Still, he said it was a very long and steep ride, so I rode around Town Lake instead. 

Town Lake is actually a river/reservoir (my friend Steve says that it's not the Colorado River, but rather a Colorado River, that runs through the middle of Austin; it is sometimes called Lady Bird Lake).  There are several miles of pedestrian paths and it's very pretty and well used, both on the path and on the water.  Plus there is a statue.

It's not entirely clear to me who this is, although Wikipedia says it is the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, who lived in Austin.  What you assume to be a rifle in his left hand is actually a guitar.  Seriously.  It's Austin.

After my bike ride I drove to Mount Bonnell, having taken the bike shop guy's dubiousness seriously, and that was a good call.  At one point the drive seemed to be at a 60 degree angle.  That is steep.  When you get to the base of the park, you walk up 106 steps, more or less, to the top.  It is the highest point in Austin, with an elevation of 775 feet.  It's named for George W. Bonnell, who fought for Texas independence in 1836, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the Republic of Texas, published the Texas Sentinel in 1840, was in several expeditions and was killed in a camp on the Rio Grande the day after Christmas 1842.  He had quite an exciting life, and is somehow related to my friend Susan.  It was this relation that caused her to tell me to see Mount Bonnell and I'm glad she did.  As you can imagine, the view of Austin is spectacular.

 

Technically it is called Covert Park.  Although it is somewhat tucked away, the park is actually named for Frank Covert, the first car dealer in central Texas (1909) whose family donated it to the county in the 1930's.

After leaving Mount Bonnell I drove west, I guess, which I had hoped would lead me toward a gas station (I'd sort of forgotten to stop and was down to the red zone).  Because of my fear of running out of gas I didn't appreciate the Austin Cliffs.


This isn't a picture I took, since I was busy driving, but it gives you a little bit of a taste.  Actually, most of the Mount Bonnell Road is two lane and very windy.  It reminded me of the hilly parts of California more than Texas.  Very beautiful.

Finally I found a gas station and then drove around a while, partly to see the city and partly because I was lost.  My intention had been to have a little lunch in a park, but the park that I found didn't really have an entrance so I parked on a dead end street for a while, along with a couple of abandoned Christmas trees.  Later I did find a park and read my LBJ book for a while until it got too windy.

Okay, you're all wanting to know about the LBJ Ranch - and if you're on Facebook, you're wanting to see my picture of his bathroom.  So let's go back in time to Thursday, which turned into my LBJ Day.

The Johnson Library, on the campus of the University of Texas, used to be free - until about three weeks ago.  Then they must have heard I was coming so decided to start charging admission.  They're still not set up to receipt cash but they ask you to put $8 in the free will donation box.  Not being a complete schmuck, of course, I did as they asked.  It's a good museum.

I've been battling a cold for several days, with varying levels of success, and felt a little light-headed at the museum, so I decided to find a bite to eat and then come back to the motel for a nap.  By the time I got to my car, I felt better and got on I-35 in search of San Marcos.  San Marcos is about a half-hour from Austin and where Johnson went to college.  They have a museum, too.  After driving for about 2 minutes I saw a sign that said "Lady Bird Lake" (see above) and pulled off the highway.  It was mid-60's and sunny and I ate a bag of Cheezits (they have replaced Triscuits as my carbohydrate of choice) while reading the Johnson book on a park bench.  When I got back on I-35, I saw a sign for Johnson City (his home town) and thought "shiny!" and headed that way instead.

Google Maps always wants you to drive on highways, so I don't understand why it directed me to Fitzhugh Road rather than 290.  Not a bad thing, though - although Highway 290 has the moniker Hill Country Trail, Fitzhugh really lets you experience this land, which is sort of like the Sandhills on steroids.  Sometimes I felt like I was driving on a roller coaster, and the road bends around in a way that is frightening, fun and spectacular.  This gives you a bit of an idea:

There are ranches out here, and a bunch of wineries.  Yeah, a wine tasting on this kind of road sounds like a great idea.  I took a rain check.

At one point, along a steep and winding decline, there was a sign warning of a one lane bridge ahead.  That actually overstates the nature of the infrastructure, which seemed a bit more like the kind of thing you'd build for a driveway if you had a drainage problem.  Here is the water feature it crossed:

Did I mention that the Hill Country is historically a very poor area?

You can't understand Lyndon Johnson, says Robert Caro, without understanding the Hill Country - and who am I to argue with one of the great biographers of the 20th century?  The Hill Country was settled by people from Tennessee, who saw the grass and trees and thought of home.  What they didn't know was that it had taken 10,000 years of miniscule amounts of topsoil settling each season to get to the point where there was enough for grass and trees.  Plow it up, and you get to wait another 10,000 years.  Johnson's passion for the Great Society came from seeing the very hard life of his family and neighbors growing up.

Anyway, the only down side to Fitzhugh Road is that you enter Johnson City (population 1,656) sort of from the back, and it's easy to get turned around.  On the other hand, by driving around looking for the national monument, I found the LBJ School (didn't take a picture because there were parents waiting for kids and I thought it would be creepy) and the Pedernales Electrical Co-op which is the most substantial building in town.  I parked there, thinking it was perhaps a museum, but as luck would have it, the Co-op is right across the street from Johnson's Boyhood Home.  There's even a sign, which a more observant person might have called a "clue."

After having been in Eisenhower's boyhood home, I was struck by how large Johnson's was.  It's about 1,800 square feet, I believe that Curt, my tour guide, said, so it's not a Taj Mahal, and generally a family today with five kids would like more room, but it didn't seem as small as Eisenhower's.  I guess everything is bigger in Texas.

Curt told me how to get to the Johnson Ranch, which is about 15 miles west of Johnson City, and off I went.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for:  Lyndon Johnson's bathroom:

 

Very 60's.  The tour guide said that you could tell where Johnson sat in every room because there was always a telephone there.  At the head of the dining room table, next to his seat (which is a somewhat grotesque desk chair, referred to by Lady Bird as "that goddawful chair") is a phone hanging from underneath the table.

 

A couple of interesting tidbits:

• Johnson's ranch was the first remote White House to be used by a President.  He spent about 25% of his time here.
• It's a working ranch, so there are a bunch of cattle wandering around. (Just to tie everything together, their irrigation system was made by Valley - from Valley, Nebraska.)
• There's an airfield on site, where Johnson would fly in using a smaller Air Force One.  (Any plane the President flies on is called Air Force One, but you already knew that.)

And that was my Lyndon Baines Johnson immersion experience.  Except that I'm still reading the Caro book, and expect to be doing so for quite some time.

 

Oh - I left out the music part of Austin.  Coincidentally this is "Free Week" which means most of the bars don't have a cover charge, which is always a good thing.  Wednesday night I went to a place called Mohawk Austin and heard a couple of bands.  (The first was just one guy, but he called himself a band, so why not?)  I really liked San Saba County.

 

I do not have a great deal of experience being spontaneous, so this "random travel" thing has been quite fun.  There is not anything I've done so far that wasn't interesting.  I never did get to San Marcos but will probably drive through there when I leave on Sunday to go to San Antonio.

 

And I should say that I haven't found Austin to be particularly weird, the statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn notwithstanding.  There are certainly some funky places (fun), and a fair number of street people (sad), but it seems a bit like Seattle which I don't think of as weird.  Maybe everything is relative, and compared to the rest of Texas.....well, that answers that.