As you might imagine, we come across quite a few ghost stories on our Nerd Trips, but this is a story of my own “ghostly” encounter at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas.

A Texas landmark with connections to the Old West and President Lyndon Johnson, come along on our Nerd Trip to the Driskill Hotel, which is also said to be one of the most haunted hotels in the United States.

Before visiting the O. Henry museum in Austin, my knowledge of this famed American writer could be summed up in just a few words: “The Gift of the Magi,” the tale of a financially strapped young couple who, through a clever plot twist, discover the true meaning of gifts and giving.

But if this sentimental short story was my only impression of O. Henry, we got quite a plot twist as we learned about the writer himself, a hard-living and colorful character worthy of any story he could write.

The O. Henry museum sits on prime real estate in downtown Austin.

Welcome to the Texas White House, home to our 36th president Lyndon Baines Johnson and his family. According to the National Park Service, President Johnson “flew home to his ranch 74 times during his five years in office, living and working for 490 days, or about one-fourth of his presidency, at the Texas White House.”

Now it’s time to hit the road as we start the driving tour of the LBJ ranch, a place that served as a driving force in the life of our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, shaping how he viewed the world. The Visitor’s Center offers a car audio tour CD featuring information, soundbites and music, which really adds to the experience.

Everything is bigger in Texas, and that is very true of our trip to the Texas White House, home of our 36th president Lyndon Baines Johnson.

You don’t just tour LBJ’s house when you visit: you see a working ranch with livestock, a schoolhouse, an airplane hangar and landing strip, lots of old cars, a state park and a national park with a river running through it, all accompanied by a driving tour CD with soundbites and era-appropriate music.

“For the first time ever at a presidential library, you can sit behind the most powerful desk in the world,” declares the brochure from the George Bush Library and Museum. By traveling to College Station, Texas, you can sit in the “Seat of Power” in an Oval Office replica!

At Papa Bush’s (as my mom calls him) museum, you can get a souvenir photo for just over $10, I think. Or you can pay a small fee ($5 the day we visited) to have your camera “commissioned” to the museum for personal photos. We were all over that!