The beautiful grounds along the Potomac, with the trees and the carefully sculpted gardens are worth the trip. As others have advised, I would not do the mansion tour more than once. It was like being herded like cattle, and the photos of the interior of the museum are good enough for that experience, The museum exhibits have some very cleverly demonstrated information, from basic to more detailed, and evolving material, which is also worth the trip. What is discouraging, and what I noticed on my second trip as well, is that for some reason the staff and visitor center personnel can be very rude and immature in a youthful inexperienced way, and for some reason, this behavior continues to be noticed across people’s visits. I wish this sort of thing was not tolerated because the grounds can really tire out a visitor and there’s a need for support sometimes and often they just find a snotty young person that makes him feel bad. I would suggest to anybody to take the basic tour and avoid staff as much as possible. It’s also true that most of the bad apples there give a bad name to the truly kind couple of older, more experienced staff members.