Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site

June 2 – I’m starting to wear down.  This burning the candle at both ends is getting to me.  I made our regular Sunday breakfast as we didn’t plan to leave until 11 today.  We looked up the RV parks we found at the AAA office and called and made reservations at one for our trip south from Canada.  Then we hit the road for Buffalo again.  At least now we were pretty familiar with the route.  The Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site didn’t open until noon and the first tour wasn’t til 12:30 so we were in good shape.  We had about 10 minutes to wait and so Bill went to the front of the house and took photos and video. 

 

Spot where Rossevelt stood for inauguration

We were the first ones in the door!  Bill used his senior park pass to get us in for free and after checking out the gift shop we did the display about the 1901 Pan American Exposition.  That was really interesting.  The Exposition was like a World’s Fair and it was a big ordeal since it was the turn of the century.  President McKinley was attending the event.  Roosevelt was friends with Ansley Wilcox, a prominent business man in Buffalo that he often stayed with when he was in town.  When Roosevelt got word of McKinley’s assassination he was summoned to Buffalo and arrived with only his travelling

President Chambers

clothes and stayed again at his friend Wilcox’s home.  Since that was where Roosevelt was, that is where the members of the cabinet who were in Buffalo assembled.  He was sworn in at the Wilcox home in the library wearing a suit he borrowed from Wilcox.  He then wrote his first press release from the house using Mr. Wilcox’s office.  The tour is guided for the downstairs and the guide does an excellent job of telling the sequence of events.  The upstairs is open to peruse on your own.  They have one room set up to look like the White House office when Roosevelt took office and they have a computer program in the top of the desk that you can use to take your photo at the desk and then make yourself on the front page of the Buffalo Times and email it to people.  Of course we did it and Bill did it again of just him.

 

We didn’t have any problem getting through downtown and out to the lighthouse.  The lighthouse is on the land of the Coast Guard and at first we thought we couldn’t visit as the main gate was closed.  Then we saw a man coming out of a side walk through.  He said it leads to the lighthouse and is open until dark.  We knew the lighthouse itself would not be open as it is maintained by the Buffalo Lighthouse Association but at least we could get close enough for photos.  I can contact them to have them mail me their stamp for my lighthouse passport book.

 

It was at least 2 and Bill was starving and we thought about going to the Navel Park on the other side of the canal from the Coast Guard but when we got down there we saw they were having a Gay Days Festival and it was packed.  We would have had to walk blocks and blocks for a parking space and didn’t see any place to eat so we navigated back through town to the road going home.  I really needed to get ink for my printer so we tried a Wal-mart and then a Target and had a late lunch at Wendy’s.

 

Molly has been at the door when we open it every day.  I think she misses having us or Xena around.  It was a really beautiful day out but super windy and once the sun started going down it was chilling down fast.  We ate late since we had such a late lunch.  Only 6 campers still in our loop.