Mel's #40 and Erica's #7 - Tour the White House

Closer than most people get to The White House!

It's now been a month since we set foot in THE White House - its been tough to put into words what it's actually like being in this place that most people only glance at behind an iron fence from beyond The President's Park (did you even know the grounds of The White House are called "The President's Park"?  Or that The President's Park is a National Park?), or, even more likely, only read about in books or see in the background of a few nightly news broadcasts.  We've tried before to coordinate a White House tour through our Senator (did you know you can request a tour through your Senator - and that it's free?!?), but didn't have any luck.  When we added this goal to our list, we knew we'd have to expand our availability, and plan a trip to D.C. around a White House tour, and just cross our fingers and hope we'd be granted one.

So I exchanged emails with a staffer of Senator Joe Donnelly, and had her submit our availability as the entire months of April and May.  I did this way back in January, giving them plenty of time to run the background checks on us (yes, they do this!), and see if we could fit in to the tour schedule.  We were prepared to keep doing this every couple of months until it worked out.  We waited...and waited.  And waited some more.  One day in late April, I emailed the staffer again inquiring about the status of our request, and she hadn't yet heard back.  Lo and behold, the very next day I got an email from her saying our tour had been approved - we were going to The White House!  (Cue important-sounding Presidential music...)

Mary McLeod Bethune Council House

We found out about the date of our tour only 2 weeks prior to the scheduled date.  Not much time to plan, but that's just how we roll.  We'd been prepared to plan a quick trip to our Nation's Capitol, so it didn't fluster us much (other than the fact that we'd already scheduled a quick trip to Minneapolis the weekend prior, but we've also had PLENTY of experience where things just work out so that we're traveling several weekends in a row).  We flew in to D.C. on Friday, May 2nd, took a bus from Dulles to the Rosslyn Metro, then the Metro to Arlington National Cemetery, where we proceeded to walk a couple of miles out to the LBJ Memorial Grove on the Potomac.  It was a nice walk, if long, and we followed it up with an equally long walk nearly all the way around the Pentagon to visit the 9/11 memorial there.  The memorial is sobering, and very well planned out.

View from the Blue Room

We spent Saturday morning visiting a couple more national parks (The Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, and the African American Civil War Memorial), then headed to The White House to make our tour time.  National Parks Rangers escorted us to the Secret Service stations on the grounds of The White House, where they checked our tickets and ID's (not once, but twice), we went through a security checkpoint, then were left to wander on our self-guided tour of the East Wing (or Residence) of The White House.  It was a little strange that there was just one Secret Service guy around in each room, and that everyone was just left to wander and spend as much time there as they liked - we expected a much more regimented schedule and secure, guided tour, but it was nice to be able to take your time and ask any questions of the Secret Service that popped into your head.  They are experts on each and every item in the rooms we got to tour - their expansive White House knowledge was impressive.  They know dates that objects were acquired, where they were made and by whom, which President received or purchased them, and any other color commentary regarding the items.

Our tour included a walk down the Colonnade, which looks out onto The Kennedy Garden, and we got to peek into The China Room, The Library, The Vermeil Room, and The Map Room from the downstairs hallway, then we ascended a flight of marble stairs to the second floor (or ground floor, depending on which direction you are viewing The White House from), and walked through The East Room, The Green Room, The Blue Room, The Red Room, The State Dining Room, The Cross Hall, and, finally, The Entrance Hall.  Pictures weren't allowed (ahem, but see the view from the Blue Room photo?  Stealthy!), but the view across the back lawn of The White House, past the fountain, and onto the Washington Monument and Jefferson Monument were absolutely stunning.  We stopped a couple of times just to soak in the fact that we were really seeing and experiencing these things in person!

Frederick Douglass' study

Being surrounded by all that history was also pretty damn impressive.  I honestly figured we'd see a couple of rooms that are really not in use any longer, but the Secret Service agents assured us that the rooms we walked through are utilized at least a few days a week for various Presidential business, they just roll the barriers out of the way at the end of the day when the visitors are gone, and visitors wouldn't know that just hours before, dozens of random people were milling about in those rooms.  It made total sense when we walked through the rooms of the East Wing, and you can see exactly the spots you've seen on the news where some press conferences are held in The East Room or Cross Hall.  And the State Dining Room - it's hard to even wrap your mind around how many influential people have dined there over the years!

We left there happy campers.  Getting to see something you hold in very high regard up close and personal is an experience that's hard to match.  It made us wonder if the people who go to work there every day ever lose that reverence for the building and the history it's been witness to throughout the decades - I'm not sure that sense of awe would ever leave us if we were going to work there every day.  It was slightly disconcerting to see the volume of pre-teens or teenagers that looked thoroughly bored with the experience just tromp through the rooms so they could get out of there before a teacher noticed that they weren't looking at a single thing, but I guess that's the nature of youth!  One child, a roughly 13-year-old boy (who may have been 19, as anyone under 25 has started to look like a baby to me), did pause to ask a secret service agent, while the light from the windows reflecting off the green silk wall coverings of the room we were all standing in cast a faintly Granny Smith apple-colored tint on his friends' faces (aptly named The Green Room because EVERYTHING IN IT IS GREEN), "Why do they call this the Green Room?"  Umm...

Post-delicious margaritas and dinner with Ruthi and Tracey!

To top off our White House visit day, we slogged through a not-so-nice part of town to tour the Frederick Douglass Home National Historic Site, then had a great dinner with friends from the D.C. area.  Hopefully we'll be back to visit the White House sometime - it was a great experience!