Fredricksburg and on to Austin, Texas

I started my day with a brief  chat  with the motel owner, who was out with his wife sweeping up the acorns from the oak tree."How long have you had this motel?" I asked him.

"It's been two years now."
"Where were you before?"
"I was in Florida."
"What brought you here?
"The economy there got very bad."
"And things are better here?"
"Yes, and my wife and I do everything ourselves (to cut expenses)"
Just one more casualty of the bad economy but making the best of a bad situation.
I decided to make the most of a good situation and went next door to the donut shop. I was happy to find that although their selection of donuts was limited, they also had fresh croissants. I bought two and brought them back to the motel.

Our first goal for the day was Fredricksburg and the large museum there about WWII in the Pacific. Unlike most of the towns where the main street of the town was also the highway through the town, Fredricksburg was not ugly. On the contrary, the six blocks of the business district were quite attractive. Fredricksburg had evidently been settled by immigrants from Germany and many of the restaurants on this strip still featured German food. In addition to the restaurants, there were many shops selling all kinds of arts and crafts materials from inexpensive tourist items to an exhibit of beautiful blown glass items that did not even have prices attached to them, so that looking at them was more like being in a museum than in a gallery. There were also small parks and a couple small museums on this strip in addition to the large WWII museum. A few of the buildings also remained from the 19th century. The streets were crowded with tourists, so that it was a little like New Hope on a Sunday afternoon.

One might wonder why a major museum about the war in the Pacific would be built so far from the Pacific Coast, but there was a reason - Admiral Nimitz, who was the admiral in charge of the naval war in the Pacific was born in Fredricksburg. At the War in the Pacific Museum we were informed that it would take at least 3 hours to see everything - more time than we had available if we were to get to Austin that day. After hemming and hawing a bit, we decided to pay our money and see what we could in an hour or so. It was, indeed, quite a museum, with a detailed account in words, pictures, and films of the events leading up to the war with Japan and the various battles that took place. The part I found most interesting was  the story of developments in Japan prior to the war, including an attempt by some in the military to assassinate the emperor. We gave short shrift to much of the military history and did manage to see most of the museum in about 45 minutes.



longhorn cattle on LBJ ranch, Johnson City, Texas



Then it was off to Johnson City to see the place where Lyndon Johnson was raised. When we got to the museum at his ranch, the two park rangers were just leaving. We nicely informed them that all of the promotional material about the museum said that it was open until 5:00, and it was now only 4:00. They then nicely informed us that Texas was on Central Time not Mountain Time and that it was now actually 5:00. Who knew? We didn't. It was quite a surprise! In any event, we had to acknowledge that they were entitled to close the museum even if we did think it was only 4:00.

Since we were there already, we did a short walk into the ranch where they had fenced in some deer that were common in the area and also some longhorn cattle; I was also surprised to learn that these cattle were actually living wild on the prairie when settlers arrived. They were descendants of cows that had been abandoned or lost by earlier Spanish explorers.

Our last stop of the day was Austin. We arrived at our motel at about 6:00 (Central Time) and settled in for the evening.