Savannah has a mild obsession with Presidential Libraries, I guess you could say. Many of her family vacations were centered around visiting one or more and after college, she worked at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum for almost four years. On Saturday, we made the nice little 45 minute drive to Simi Valley to visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

The setting of the museum was gorgeous. We should have known better than to go over spring break, but sometimes that’s just how things play out. The parking lots were full and we had to park along the winding road we took in from the main street. There were shuttles, but we just enjoyed the beautiful day and walked.

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First off, the tickets are $21/each. Tickets at all the other Presidential Libraries range from $6-12, with the National Parks portion of the FDR Library bringing it to $14. Secondly, we’re biased toward the Bush Library and Museum admission stickets since Savannah designed them, but we like them better. They gave us the round ones for our shirts to get into the exhibit and then paper printouts of actual rectangular tickets “for the scrapbook.”

Now, we’re not going to bore you with all the details of his story, but we will say there was a lot of actual color used in the museum. Lots of colors. There were some really cool things to see and learn, and if you’ve never been to a presidential library, you really should go.

After much wandering through small doorways and winding through exhibits, we were dumped in the pavilion where Air Force One hangs. Yes, the whole plane. The space is so large, you almost don’t realize how giant the plane is. One of our favorite parts was the view through the glass wall. Gorgeous. After our tour of Air Force One, we were faced with one option–to go downstairs. So we did… and couldn’t find where the exhibit continued, so we went downstairs again. After wandering a while, we finally found a tiny sign on the elevator that said “Exhibit continues on third floor.” Whew. Then we were back to where we got lost in the first place, but found a single doorway that lead to the continuation of the exhibit.

Then we reached the current temporary exhibit, Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives. Reagan actually had lots of connections with Disney, for example, he was emcee and TV talent on the day Disneyland opened, so it was the perfect opportunity for this awesome exhibit.

“…the exhibition features more than 500 artifacts from nearly nine decades of Disney history – over 50% of which have never been seen by the public – including models, props, costumes, set pieces and artwork from throughout Disney history.”

We ended the tour on the back patio, enjoyed the view and weather some more and finally made our way back to the car to head home.