Richard Nixon Library

 Well, I'll be pecking away at visiting the many historic locations within a 100-mile radius for a while. (Outpost 2.  Outstepping  Intermediate).  Here is a start!    

We took our Daisy Girl Scouts to the Richard Nixon Library & Museum (14.6 miles away) to earn their Democracy for Daisies merit badges.  

"I asked the docent to gloss over the war in Vietnam and Watergate!" my co-leader stage whispered before entry.  Amusing, as these were the most salient aspects of this particular presidency from what little I remembered of high school history courses and I was curious how the sympathetic docent would approach them.  But even the abbreviated tour was educational!  

First, I discovered that the flags were flying at half mast because Jimmy Carter had died last week at 100 and would continue to fly at half mast during the next president's inauguration.  The docent speculated that Jimmy's body would probably be moved to the Carter Center to take advantage of federal security (at which point I studied my shoes, having nearly smuggled a pocket knife into the Nixon facility).   

I didn't realize that every president since Hoover has established a presidential library.  I didn't realize this library is the second most popular place in the county to have a wedding, with its terraced library of roses favored by each first lady.  If I were first lady, my selection would be problematic-- miniature or black?      

They had a wonderful model of Washington, D.C. that laid out the branches of government buildings (White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court) in a way I had never appreciated in my childhood visits from Maryland.  I want to go back to visit to see the cherry blossoms and rediscover the non-descript grey Smithsonian galleries.  

They had replicas of several rooms in the White House and it was so fun to see the girls behind the big desk in the "oval office."  

Title 9 and the EPA were established under Nixon.  A few rooms later, the docent shared "Nixon loved reading by the fireside so much, he would have his aids turn on the AC so he could sit next to a stoked fire and read even in the middle of summer!  When the next administration began renovations, they could see the stain his pipe smoke left on the ceiling over this chair!"  We are all a bundle of contradictions, aren't we?  

We saw Nixon's childhood home which had not been moved, just supported with a foundation and Nixon's burial site just a stone's throw away from the back door.  Things come full circle.