HBGALLAVANTERS

After visiting Harriet Tubman’s home we headed to Seneca Falls to visit the birthplace of the Women’s Right to vote movement.   But like so many of the places we’ve visited, this visitor center was closed. It’s only open two days a week and we did not make it on either of the days it’s open. We were able to walk around the grounds and speak with a ranger but not much else. Very sad that so many locations are closed or have limited hours.   

 B Went to visit what I thought was a National park site dedicated to Harriet Tubman. Turns out that National Historic Site is still in the fledgling stages of development. The location is Auburn, NY in the Finger Lakes. The location is the site of the home Harriet made for herself after helping to relocate as many as 80 slaves north of the Mason Dixon line.  Harriet settled  here and purchased some property from Secretary of Stare Seward. She developed the property into a pig farm and she built a boarding house.  She ultimately built a home for the aged on her property. The White House below is the location of the house for the aged that she helped start. She was very involved with the AME ZION church and it is the church that is now running tours at the properties that she once owned. The church is trying to work with the Park. Service to remodel the home that Harriet owned. Hopefully soon that will be the location of the visitor center.  

After the cars we headed over to tour the home where Teddy Roosevelt took his oath of office after President McKinley succumbed to the two shots he suffered at the hands of an anarchist when he was greeting visitors to the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo in 1901.  Roosevelt rushed to Buffalo where he stayed at a friends house and after McKinley died he was administered  the oath of office by a local judge.   The house is maintained not by the Park Service but by a cadre of volunteers.  The visitor center which is in the actual home, concentrates on the happenings of the day with major focus on the Pan- American exhibition that  was held in Buffalo and the reason why McKinley was even there.   Fact: only 6 presidents have not had taken the oath of office in DC. Washington and Adams who were both Presidents before DC was the Capitol. Chester Arthur after Garfield was assassinated, Teddy Roosevelt after McKinley was Assassinated, Coolidge after Harding died in office while on a trip to

On the suggestion of our neighbors Mark and Christine Bonn we decided to spend the morning in Buffalo checking out the Pierce-Arrow Museum.  The company originally started out as a cycle manufacturer in downtown Buffalo.  It then morphed into an auto manufacturer of rather high end models. It folded in the mid 1930s but the cars are still revered as works of art.  This little museum has some great examples of both cycles, cars, memorabilia, signage and advertising. It also houses a replica of a gas station that Frank Lloyd Wright defined for Tydol gas.  The cycles: I especially liked the “trainer” developed  in 1886.  The precursor to the Peleton.  The cars - which are not limited to only Pierce-Arrows: The signage, advertising and memorabilia: Checkout these books for girls.  The Frank Lloyd Wright gas station mock-up straight out of the “Jetsons.”   They were the first company to make a bulletproof car. The second one made was for FDR. The first went to J. Edgar Hoover.    They have

 Well we made it back to New York and we headed for the falls. Thanks to our neighbors Christine and Mark Bonn we were provided with lots of fun things to do in and around Buffalo and Niagara. On their urging we decided to do the Cave of the Winds tour. It was soooooo fun.  You take an elevator down 175 feet. (18 floors). Then you put on designer souvenir flip flops and a plastic poncho and you walk down and around the American and Bridal Veil Falls. In spite of the ponchos we still got soaked.  There is one platform just under the falls called the hurricane. The force of the falls feels like a hurricane and you can barely stand up. I felt like Al Roker reporting in a hurricane.  No photos. I was too afraid I’d lose my phone.  Before and after  What a fun experience.  After this we walked around the rest of the stare park to see horseshoe falls.  We learned that it was Tesla in conjunction with Westinghouse who convinced the locals that hydro electric power could be converted to AC pow