Mom's Christmas Present

(A photo of Mamie Eisenhower which hangs in the living room.)

For Mom's Christmas present this year, I took her for a tour yesterday of President Eisenhower's farm in Gettysburg. Though we've toured various parts of Gettysburg before, neither of us had ever seen the President's farm. It was especially pretty as it was decorated for Christmas as it would have been in the '50s and '60s when the President and his wife, Mamie, still lived there. We had several excellent tour guides (including one who went to school with President Eisenhower's grandchildren) and enjoyed wandering through the humble home and around the farm. The farmhouse is very obviously from the '50s era - it felt like stepping back in time. In some ways, it felt as if I was in my grandparents' home. The only fancy room in the house is the living room - it's got lots of wonderful knick-knacks including two bird figurines from Queen Elizabeth, a rug from the Shah of Iran, and a beautiful marble fireplace that was once in the White House. We enjoyed seeing the encased guest book in which Mamie had world leaders and her grandchildren sign everytime they came, Mrs. Eisenhower's pink bathroom (everything was pink, including the toilet and bathtub!) and the wooden floor in the humble office of the President where you can still see the holes from his golf shoes. After the tour, we enjoyed a hearty lunch close to the fireplace in the restaurant of the beautiful, new Gettysburg Visitors' Center. (I definitely want to bring the boys sometime soon to tour the exhibits and see the Cyclorama show.) We ended the day with a visit to some of the outlet stores in town before heading home.


(In the living room - my favorite room of the farmhouse.)


(A photo of the little guest house that sits off to the side of the main farmhouse. I, unfortunately, didn't get any shots of the farmhouse - my camera batteries died!)