I greatly appreciate all of the suggestions and information provided! I apologize if my initial post was not clear. I should have began with one topic.
Gotcha. I had assumed all you wanted to do at first was puttering about on the golf course. Meaning diagonal stride shuffling and breaking trail, not skate.
Since I initially skied in Frisco and saw the skate-skiers, that has been what I had wanted to participate in, or at least try. Since there are no local groomed trails, renting would be the way to go.
Strictly speaking, once you have the technique fairly down, you don't actually need groomed trails. Hard crust - refrozen part melt- works amazingly well, so long as it's not completely broken. Since we see snow so rarely down here, there's a group (read: OK, fewer than 10) of us crazies who like to skate crusted snowplow throw, especially along median strips (read: fewer pedestrians postholing).
I will re-read all of the posts and decide how much I want to spend to finally get into this activity.
Since you mention Frisco, I will point to https://recyclesportsfrisco.com/ - you might be able to find booties to work with the Dovres and you will see boots that worked with the Splitkeins back in the day.