Since hitting the road eight months ago, we have visited the homes of former presidents in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and across Virginia.  Today we visited our first Presidential Library.  We took our bags of school work expecting to work in the library and then visit the little museum area when we finished.  It turns out that the library is a research library that is not open to the public, and the “little museum area” is a full-fledged museum.  The hour or so I expected to spend there turned into three or four hours.  I was really impressed at how informative and well-planned the museum was.  We learned some great stories from Bush’s life, as well as a lot of American and world history that intersected with his life.

There was a great scavenger hunt for kids.  Throughout the museum, there were dog houses with Millie-typed plush dogs on top.  Inside were bones with printed answers to the scavenger hunt questions.  The kids had great fun finding them, and went home with a bunch of facts they were eager to tell Dad!

We learned some great stories of Bush’s bravery as a pilot during WWII.  The aircraft carrier he was on was called USS San Jacinto, named after the Texas Independence battlefield we just visited two days ago.

model of USS San Jacinto

I’m not clear if this is a replica of a plane he flew or a similar one or what.  At least one plane that he flew was destroyed – it was hit by Japanese gunfire while he was on a mission.  He pushed through and carried out his mission before calling for his crewmates to bail.  He spent two hours in the ocean, worried about his crewmates and whether he would be captured by the enemy, before he was rescued.  There actually is even video of his rescue!

Those photos are of George and Barbara with their young son Georgie while father George was a student at Yale.

Her Indian name is Cuddles-With-Statues.

The White House display was super cool.  You can look in the windows and check out 360 views of the room in each window.

She gave a little bit of her own inaugural speech, but wanted to watch pretty much all of Bush’s.

I wish I had taken a wider shot of the Oval Office – they have a impressively large and detailed replica of it.

In the Barbara Bush area, there’s a huge “dollhouse” of the White House.  Kids can crawl inside and listen to her read children’s stories, like “Corduroy” and “Ferdinand”.

My kids have never learned a thing about the Berlin Wall, but having a real segment of it there prompted a lot of confused and concerned questions about it.  Mr. Bang was particularly disturbed in learning that history.

Gathering information in the Situation Room, leading up the Gulf War.