Ronald Reagan Library is located on 100 acres on a hill overlooking the valley; the setting is magnificent, the views wonderful. It is the largest of the presidential libraries; I call it a work in progress; they are renovating a big part of it to get ready to celebrate 100 years since Reagan's birth, celebration in 2011. Below, Reagan's Air Force One, in which he flew over 600,000 miles during his 8 years; quite roomy inside but now they use much larger 747s.
John and Jan Zweitel made a scale model of the White House which is quite good; roughly one inch/one foot scale; great detail of the main house, West Wing and East Wing. 
We visited there on "Colonial America Day", where people are dressed up in period costumes, cooking, blacksmithing, demonstrating musket use etc to the school kids. Demonstration of musket firing pictured below.
The previous day we went to the Gamble House, built in 1908 as a winter residence for the son of the Procter/Gamble founder. It is described as America's Arts and Crafts masterpiece, with asian aesthetics, including this Japanese black pine door.
Finally, we went to three houses desingned by Lloyd Wright, eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright. The one below was the most spectacular, "The Sowden House", built in 1926 and recently renovated. 5,600 sq ft built around a center courtyard (now pool), it was designed with Mayan Temple themes; the house has lots of cut out stone to reflect Mayan culture; the renovation was wonderful with all rooms looking out on the pool (no pictures inside); one of the rooms had a 60 gallon salt water aquarium with exotic fish, coral, kelp; best I have ever seen. Oh, the current owners don't live there, they rent it out for movies (The Aviator), tv and parties at $4,000/night. They say business is good.
No comments:
Post a Comment