Category Archives: Retirement

2 week Texas update

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We are still here!  We had a bit of ‘inclement’ weather 2 days after my last post.  It sounded terrible!  Thunderstorms, winds to 60mpg, tornadoes, 2-3″ of rain in a few hours and (the Airstreamers worst nightmare) hail stones larger than dimes!  What should we do?  Hookup and run?  Find a car wash or gas station to hide under?  Since the county we were in was not specifically one of the map of the worst we (I) decided to stay.  Here is one of the maps we saw:

We are in Burnet County and it was not in yellow at all.  We both fell right asleep but I was awake at 1 am and listening to the hubbub outside.  Heavy LOUD rain, wind but no hail sounds.  We had our windows open for the coolness and I never heard the sound of hail hitting the glass.  I got up and put up our side and rear awnings, I did NOT have the main awning down.  I learned my lesson from Arizona many years ago.  I was awake for about 30 minutes until I convinced myself that there was nothing else I could do about all this.

Roxie woke up about 3:15 to the heavy thunderstorm sounds, lightning sounds like directly above the trailer.  Very loud and cracking.  Roxie did not like this and was scared, she started praying.  I looked outside and saw a small stream going under out trailer.  I knew this might happen from looking around prior to this.  However, our pad is very firm and packed.

We made it through the night and there was no damage or erosion.  It was quite an experience.

That day, Saturday, we decided to take a drive through some of the Texas Hill Country.  The destination was Fredricksburg.  I knew it was a very popular town.  We could also try out some back roads, which I love to do.  At one point we ended up on an unpaved road but only about 10 miles worth.  Roxie thought that I did that on purpose.  No, not this time.  Along these roads, we saw numerous deer, vultures, wild turkeys, other various birds and a turtle waiting to cross the road!

On the road, we passed by Lake LBJ that had an overlook and a monolith made out of pink granite.  The pink granite came from a 600′ dome of it that is near Marble Falls:

Fredricksburg was very quaint and touristy!  I kind of figured it would be as a lot of people come up from Austin or San Antonio for the day or weekend.  It was a bit too much for us so we opted to keep going.

One place I knew we were going to go by was the Lyndon B Johnson State and National Historic Parks.  We stopped into the State Park location and the ranger there was very excited and animated that we could still get into the last tour of LBJ’s Texas home.  We latched on to his enthusiasm and headed for the tour.

LBJ is a bit before my time as I was only 8 when he decided not to run for a full second term but I do remember bits and pieces of that time.  But it is a very historical site and they do love LBJ around here so it was interesting to view the Texas White House.  Part of the journey to the tour was to drive over a large part of his farm and also see the landing strip that he had on his property.

Here is a picture of the house, a swing near the Pedernales River and the swimming pool:

At the house, they also had an interesting guestbook.  Concrete squares were created and the visitors would inscribe them while wet:

In this shot, I can see Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, Leroy Cooper, John Glenn, Hubert Humphrey, John Connelly, JFK.  He had a few important visitors.

He and his wife, Lady Bird, are buried on the ranch with other family members:

He was also born on this ranch in this home:

The road home took us through Johnson City, naturally.

On Sunday, the weather was very unpredictable and gloomy and we actually never left our spot all day!  We had to get caught up on viewing The Voice.  The rest of the week was household stuff, laundry, groceries, getting mail.

On Friday we had to go to Austin to pick up some mail and we ate at Hopdoddy’s for a late lunch and then decided to complete the LBJ trinity.  Lake, Home and Presidential Library.  The Library is on the campus of the University of Texas and had its’ own parking lot but the students are already out of classes so it didn’t matter too much.

This is our third Presidential Library, the previous two are Nixon and Reagan.  I know both the Bushs’ are in Texas so we might get to those also.  Presidential Libraries are always very interesting and positive.  You don’t see too many negative items about the President in there.  One that I remember from one fo the informational kiosks about LBJ is that he decided to run for US Congress initially because he wanted to bring electricity the Texas Hill Country.  Hard to imagine a life without electricity!

Our status has changed a bit also.  We have given our two weeks notice on this camp spot.  We will be moving on sometime next week after the Memorial Day holiday or perhaps the week after that.  We won’t go over the month that we have paid for.  We have decided to attend a wedding for one of Roxie’s relatives but that is still 1400 miles away in North Carolina!  The sooner we start the slower we can take.

 

 

Assimilation

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We have now been in Marble Falls 1 week.  3 more to go.  A lot of Borg-like activity has taken place.

One of the major items we needed to do was to get Roxie established with a pain doctor in Austin.  We took care of that yesterday.  The meeting went very well and he is willing to do whatever she needs to help her out. Check box one of assimilation.

Not only does every Texas town seem to have a Dairy Queen and a Sonic but they have BBQ places.  I would eat at one every day but luckily Roxie tempers that for me.  But we still do hit them up.  One here is town was pretty good:  (Check)

Relaxing.  I guess we are supposed to do that but we haven’t seemed to do much of that yet, but Roxie did find a swing a short distance from our site.  Most Texas homes have such a swing, don’t they? (Check)

We are now experiencing some of the humidity that we have heard of.  At night it is pretty cool with the windows open and the fans blowing.  During the day it can get a bit warm but we haven’t used the AC yet (did I mention we have metered electricity?).   Supposedly some T-Storms are coming this weekend.  Texas weather – check.

At the end of January, our trailer registration expired.  I opted to not pull the trailer anywhere and let it do so.  It was almost $420 to renew.  I was able to get a single trip permit to Texas for $20.  My first priority was to get the trailer registered in the new state.  Fortunately, since we had a rental agreement with our RV park we were able to register it in our local county (Brunet) and in the local satellite office.  Very easy.  $7 inspection, about $200 in fees ($90 of which is for being a new resident and we don’t pay that next year).  In fact, it was so easy that I did the truck that same day.  The difference between California and Texas for the truck was about $500!  That is including the $90 that will go away.  Good with me.  Check.

The full assimilation will happen when we get our Driver’s Licenses.  When you have an existing out of state license, you surrender it and you don’t have to take the written test.  HOWEVER, you still need to prove who you are and your citizenship.  The papers that we need should arrive Monday as we had to have our son get them together and mail them.  Once we have them I guess we are full Borgs, I mean Texans.   Yeeeeee Haaaa!