George Bush Library College Station Texas

Hi Ya'll!

May 28. 2013 finds Ken and I in College Station, TX, home of Texas A and M University and the George Bush Presidential Library.  More on that in a minute.

I love museums.  I love looking at photos and artifacts about places and people and times past.  When we travel I am always delighted to find and visit unique museums.  My poor children spent many vacation days dragging through some historical place or another.  When Erin was just a little girl, maybe 3 or 4, we were walking through the lobby of the Dolly Parton Stampede Dinner Show in Branson.  She spied a huge oil painting of Dolly on the wall.  She looked up at me and said "mommy is that lady dead or alive?"  So, it's no stretch to imagine that we are on a vacation in which every day will be spent in a museum, specifically presidential libraries and historic places.  Ken and I couldn't decide on a vacation for this summer.  I think we were both reluctant to plan a long trip that would take us far away from Wichita or that we would have to pay for in advance.  Back a few weeks ago when I wasn't mad at the Royals I mentioned that they would be playing the Rangers the first weekend in June.  I suggested that we could perhaps spend the last week of May visiting the 3 presidential libraries in Texas and end the week at the Rangers/Royals game.  Ken thought that sounded like a plan so here we are.

We left Maize around 8:00 a.m. Memorial Day Monday and drove to College Station.  We drove through Moore, OK along the way and witnessed the terrible devastation along I-35 from last week's monster tornado.  It was indeed bad but I do have to say it wasn't as surreal as driving through Greensburg, KS a month after a tornado swept the town away.  I think it was more personal.  I knew what had been there and it wasn't there any more-literally.  I have driven past Moore several times and it was shocking to see the piles of debris but it wasn't as moving.  It was good to see that the Warren Theater was still standing and that the parking lot was being used as a staging area for the utility companies.

My navigational skills weren't very sharp yesterday and we gee'd where we should've haw'ed a couple of times but we finally made it here after 8 hours of driving.  Our hotel is nice and we were upgraded to a King Suite-a larger room with a couch-they will get a good review on Trip Advisor.  We tried Freebird World Burrito for supper and after hitting the local Wal-Mart called it a night.

 We spent today at the George Bush Presidential Library.  We arrived at 12:00 and following the educational video began our tour of the museum.  I was thoroughly impressed both with the lives of George and Barbara Bush and with the interpretation of the museum.  It is a gorgeous facility with well planned exhibits. The layout is more or less a winding path leading you chronologically through the life of President Bush.  I was most impressed with the strong values of faith, family and leadership that molded the life of both the President and Barbara and how they passed these values on to their children.  The tribute to their little daughter Robin, who died just shy of her 4th birthday was especially touching.  There was a little gold charm that the President had carried with him for many years that had her name on one side and "love forever" on the other.  At the end of the museum there was an exhibit about Project C and the human genome project and the research being done to eradicate cancer.  The Bushes talked about finding a cure for cancer and that had Robin been alive today, she most likely would've survived her bought with leukemia.  All in all we spent 4 1/2 hours at the library.  Dinner was at the Olive Garden across the parking lot from the Ramada and we returned to our room where we both crashed.  I slept for an hour, Ken for 2--we will be lucky if we sleep tonight. 

Tomorrow we drive to Austin and will visit the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.

Good Night All!