TravelTravelTravel is more connected than most and the reopening of the Ronald Reagan Library has prompted us to look at all the Presidential libraries.
Ronnie’s rooms will be thrown open again from tomorrow after 18 months.
The Library will be celebrating the contribution of this Cold War hero with an Abrams M1 Main Battle Tank on display.
So to the good folk at Simi Valley, California, they are offering visitors the chance to win Ronnie and Nancy books, free passes to return and cafe meals.
The Old Sod
Ronnie’s links to the Old Sod are well-chronicled and you can visit too the recreation of the pub he visited in Ireland when he was Pres.
There are 13 Presidential libraries across the USA in all with one (Trump, remember him?) in the offing.
Some you’ll know, others are worth remembering for the quiz prog Pointless.
Like Herbert Hoover’s time capsule in Iowa.
Dam, he’s good
Hoover is probably best known for his Dam which serves the whole of the West Coast down to Mexico.
The good thing about the Presidential libraries is of course everything.
But also the scope across the country.
So you can start in FDR’s beloved Hyde Park in upstate New York.
Where you can explore the New Deal, his polio and the Second World War.
Harry S Truman finished off the work FDR started and you can see Missouri too while you’re at it.
John F Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon are forever inextricably linked.
And each brings their own corner of America.
JFK is, of course, Money Massachusetts, LBJ tough-talking Texan and Richard Milhous is well probably not what you expect.
Californians
For all that Ronnie is pure Hollywood and was Governor of California, Nixon represented the Golden State too, as a Senator.
His library is in the exotically named Yorba Linda.
And he is the only true Californian to have occupied the White House, Ronnie hailing from Illinois.
Richard obviously came before Ronnie both alphabetically and chronologically and also in the reopening of its library.
It’s been welcoming visitors back since last week.
Mind you if you’re in California why not take in both?