The conclusion to my vacation posts…
Awhile ago I had looked up to see where exactly the Reagan Library was located because I thought it might be something to do the next time I went down to visit Sarah, and it turns out it's pretty much in their hood, only 40 miles away from them in Simi Valley. As it turned out, they are also currently running an exhibit on Disney Archives – costumes, props, memorabilia from Disney's past. That sounded like the perfect excuse to head down to Simi Valley, so all of us headed down there on Saturday to check it out.
We got there just a hair after 10 a.m. (when it opened) and the parking lot was already almost full. We had already purchased our tickets online and since the kids were with us, we headed to the Disney Archives exhibit first. One of the things that I thought was really well done was incorporating how Reagan actually had involvement to some degree with Disney – he was there as an announcer on the day the park opened, and continued on to have a friendship with Walt Disney himself, which was documented through letters and photos.
The part of the exhibit I liked the most were the costumes!
Giselle's wedding dress from Enchanted. It really is that poofy!
Big Maleficent dragon head from the Disneyland Fantasmic show!
Model pirate ship from Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
I've been to only one other presidential library – George H. W. Bush at the Texas A&M campus back in 1999, and at that time, it was pretty boring and more like a library than a museum, though I looked at that link and it looks like it's now pretty impressive in its own right (a new building and exhibits were built a couple years ago).
Anyway, I was really impressed with everything. The building was set up so each exhibit flowed into each other organically. I've been to plenty of museums and usually they're like, here's the Meso-American room, here's the Ming Dynasty room, right next to each other with no flow. The Reagan Library was set up really well in a timeline so as you toured the building, the narrative really flowed well.
I was most impressed with the section that had the actual video of the 1981 assassination attempt – I'd never seen the video before and actually only knew the bare minimum about it – that it happened, that the shooter was nuts and trying to impress Jodie Foster, that Agent Brady was severely injured and went on to lobby for stricter gun control laws. The way the library had the section set up was really powerful – first you watch the video in surround sound, and then there were all the displays and artifacts, and more video about the recovery and what have you. I thought it was really well done.
One of the really awesome parts of the Library is that they have, in its own glass pavilion, the verysame Air Force One that Reagan (and other presidents) flew around in. It was decommissioned in 2004 or thereabouts and transported to the Reagan Library for display.
It's kind of amazing.
The pavilion from outside
The view from the pavilion into the valley
You could go inside the plane, but you weren't allowed to take pictures, which was kind of a bummer but on the other hand, I understand that for security reasons it's probably not the BEST idea to take pictures of the airplane that squired around various presidents and their technology. There were also these pictures put up on how they got the plane from wherever it had been, all the way to California and up the hill and into the pavilion, which was essentially built up around it. Really an engineering feat that was just as interesting as the plane itself!
Anyway, it was a GREAT trip! I'm so glad I went, and I'd love to go back to the Library by myself someday – I would probably spend all day there, have a Guinness in the pub underneath the plane (yes, really!) and read every single display in the place. As it was, it took us three hours to get through everything, even with a passle of kids.
After the library we had lunch at an incompetent Chili's, then headed back to Santa Clarita.
That evening we headed out to New Moon, which is my favorite restaurant down there. I know what you're thinking: New Moon? Isn't that part of the Twilight franchise?
NOOOOOOOOO
It's a really delicious Chinese restaurant. We ordered Chloe Shrimp (my faaaavorite!), spicy green beans, chicken fried rice, honey walnut chicken, dragon beef (my NEW favorite! omg it was amazing)… and maybe something else but now I can't remember. I did manage to beat Bill to to the bill (hah) and treated them for the meal since they'd been so generous to me the rest of the trip. DRAGON BEEF
***
In conclusion, while I bought a ton of noodles and a cutting board shaped like the United States on my vacation, I did not buy any nail polish. Don't worry, I made up for it during the rest of the month. (My nail polish guy even called today with the new OPI holiday collection. It's like he knew it was payday!)
I'm heading back to LA over New Year's to see the new bebe, so that's something to look forward to, and in the meantime I'm trying to sort the house out (more on that later) and finish my Christmas shopping before December. I ordered a ton of stuff from Lima Beads and there's at least two more bead shows I'm attending before the end of the year, PLUS I discovered there's a new Hobby Lobby in Stockton (45 miles from me – as opposed to only getting to visit Hobby Lobby when I'm in Texas every two years!).
I can't believe it's almost October!