Saggy what??? Oh Sagamore Hill!!

(I tried to keep up with our blogging day by day on our trip, and now I will post them as I get the pictures added...)

Today (9/11) we started our New England adventure! Since our first year of marriage, we always thought it would be fun to redo our honeymoon when we had our 5th anniversary. As the years went on, we thought, "Why redo the honeymoon when we can do something new??" So we devised a plan for our Five Year anniversary trip! We have really been needing this trip, so it's a good thing our annimaversary came along... I warn you, this entry is long on words so just skip it if Theodore Roosevelt isn't really your thing.

So early this morning, we attended Mass at Tony's parish and then went home and packed up the car. We drove a couple of hours up through New Jersey and into New York. When we planned our trip, we hadn't really noticed that it would be the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I was pretty nervous about traffic, but we had no problems as we drove through Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and on into Long Island. It was fun that my mom had told me she had started and ended her mission assigned to Long Island! It's a great place, and we had perfect weather today. It was really touching to listen to the NYC news station continually reporting on the 9/11 commemorations happening in the city.

Sagamore Hill, from the bottom of the hill

One thing that we DID plan on continuing from our honeymoon was our goal to visit all presidential homes and libraries. So we started with a wonderful trip to Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. They called it the "Summer White House" because he loved being there and would rather run things from Sagamore Hill than the actual White House. The house is grand and beautiful, and stuffed full of art and treasures, gifts and animal trophies galore. This man loved him some hunting trophies - whether he had hunted the animal or someone gifted him the tusks, or head or whatever it may be. He had an elephant foot trash can, a hippo foot inkwell and a rhinoceros foot inkwell. Kind of creepy except, well, he was that kind of guy who could get away with it.

Me and Tony in the gardens behind Sagamore Hill

There was a mounted moose head in their surprisingly small dining room - and his wife always sat in front of it so she could eat without having to see it. I feel certain that Teddy was happy to stare at that moose for every meal for years and years! I worked for a company once that was owned by a big-time hunter. His wife would not allow his trophies in the house, so where do you think he stored them??? At the office! There was a gigantic moose head over the copier. I think I have a little bit of compassion for Mrs. Roosevelt.

Tony enjoying the "piazza" where Roosevelt loved to look out at the water and also give speeches. He even had part of the railing removed so he could be closer to his audiences.

Teddy Roosevelt was a fascinating and brilliant man. He was arguably the most-well-read man in America and there were books all over his house. He had a photographic memory and had read pretty much every book there. He made a point of saying that none of the books were for show - they were all bought because someone in the family had wanted to read them. And the books covered a very wide-range of topics. Teddy was the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the treaty between Russia and Japan - which was largely done at Sagamore Hill. Teddy prided himself on his military actions and would rather have been called Colonel Roosevelt than President Roosevelt.

Tony enjoying the peace of the Sagamore Hill gardens.

After a truly amazing life, Teddy Roosevelt passed away after a trip to Brazil to map an uncharted river at the age of 60. We saw the bed he died in - he had a pulmonary embolism. His wife died almost 30 years later also at Sagamore Hill. Sadly, she was preceded in death by Teddy Jr, and one of their other sons had actually died as a pilot in WWI. Speaking of dying, Teddy's first wife and his mother both died the same day in the same house after his wife had their first child, a daughter.

The Roosevelt family motto - do you know what it means??

Teddy Jr. was supposed to inherit Sagamore Hill from his mother, and after years of kind of waiting for her to pass away, they all decided that Teddy Jr and his family should have their own home on the property. Their house, built in the 1930's, is now a museum where you can learn a lot more about TR's life and see some additional artifacts. Teddy Jr died shortly after d-Day in France. He and his father are one of only two pairs of father/sons to both win the congressional medal of honor. TR was given it posthumously in 2001.

The Theodore Roosevelt Museum (the house that was built for Teddy Jr.)

One cool thing about Sagamore Hill is that since TR's wife didn't pass away until almost 1950, and then the family decided to give the house and all contents to a memorial fund of some sort, ALL contents in the home are original and were used by the family. That was very cool to know that the antiques and artifacts were all what Teddy would have seen living there. He was very family-oriented. He apparently had a standing appointment every day at 4:00 pm to play with his children. How many leaders of nations can say that??

The bay that Teddy loved to look out at. In his day he kept the trees cleared so he could see right down his hill to the water. We were there on a pretty overcast day, so it wasn't nearly as pretty.

Teddy was the youngest president in office (when McKinley was assassinated TR was 42), though JFK was the youngest president elected (43). If you are in the least bit interested in presidential lives, Sagamore Hill is an imperative stop!

We saw two wild turkeys as we drove down the hill leaving the site. Here is one of them. I doubt they would have been safe in Teddy's day!

As for us, we had a picnic lunch before our tour, and tonight we drove around the area and found a Jewish deli named Ben's. It had pretty cool looking decor - something I've not seen before in a Jewish deli. I was intrigued to see that they had cabbage rolls on the menu, and they also had something they named a "Roumanian steak" which also intrigued me. The menu obviously had a bit of an eastern European flair. I asked our waitress if the cabbage was "sour cabbage" hoping to have something like what I ate on my mission in Romania. she said no it wasn't. I was sad. then she came back and said she had asked, and yes, it WAS sour cabbage! I gleefully ordered the cabbage rolls! Then oddly enough, the "sour" cabbage had some really sweet tomato-y sauce with boiled raisins in it. You people who have been to Romania and had sarmale know how disappointed I felt at that point. I made an effort, but it just wasn't the same. Maybe I should have tried the "Roumanian" steak!

We really liked the quote...

After dinner, we came back to the hotel and Tony napped while I worked on schoolwork. it's nice to have the time to relax and know that we don't have anything else to worry about. Tomorrow we will hit up TR's gravesite - we were too late to see it tonight, and then on to the big RI!