A visit to a past president on Memorial weekend.  LBJ state park and historic site  offered a glimpse of how LBJ lived.  The ranch is a working ranch and well preserved.  The house where LBJ was born, the family burial ground, the old house where LBJ was born, the open fields that are lush with wildflowers at springtime, LBJ’s house, and the Air Force One plane that LBJ used are all there to be viewed.

The tour is a self guided drive through the ranch so one has the option on how fast or how slow to do the tour.  It starts at the old house where LBJ was born.  The house is small and compact and shows arrangement and amenities that were common for the time period. It reminds me of the old wooden house that our family had and used to visit every weekend.

The burial ground is right next to a parking lot.  Contemplation occurs while lingering and looking at the headstones. The burial ground rests under trees, surrounded by manicured grass, and with headstones that are well aligned and polished.

What follows is a drive through the open fields.  The fields looks bare now with just green grass because of the Texas heat and the time of the year.  Pictures that we saw at the visitors’ center showed that the fields should be lush with wildflowers of all colors growing knee high.

The tour ends at LBJ’s house.  It is a separate tour guided by a park ranger around the house.  Outside the house sits Air Force One that LBJ used as President of the United States of America.  It is amusing to find the plane so small and so rudimentary compared to present day airlines.

We left the tour learning something new and finding some meaning during this Memorial weekend road trip.