(CNN) It has been more than three weeks since the public last saw first lady Melania Trump, who after returning from a surprise Christmas trip to visit troops in Iraq with President Donald Trump on December 27, has all but disappeared from the radar.

Between midnight on December 22, when the longest government shutdown in American history began, and January 18, the first lady had just four public events: calling children from the White House on Christmas Eve; attending Christmas Eve religious services at Washington's National Cathedral; visiting service members at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq; and a quick troop visit at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on the way back to Washington.

But the partial shutdown hasn't halted the first lady's travel. On Thursday night, just an hour after news broke that her husband nixed the use of military aircraft for a war zone trip led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Melania Trump jetted out of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, aboard her own government plane, bound for Mar-a-Lago.

A White House official said the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend trip was long-planned and is being spent with her son.

That trip marked Melania Trump's fifth solo flight since the shutdown began. Per security protocols set in place by the government and the United States Secret Service, the first lady, along with the President and the vice president, must always fly via military aircraft, leaving the Trump private air fleet, or commercial flights, out of the question. Her Secret Service detail, which is accompanying her on the trip per safety protocol, is part of the 800,000 federal employees working without a paycheck

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