WHAT do a traditional prairie farm, a 34-room summer "cottage" and a Texas Hill Country ranch have in common? They were all places beloved by occupants who went on to America's White House.

And although they were once private escape havens of Harry S. Truman, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, all now welcome visitors. Each is a special, unique site where one senses the mood of both the place and people who lived there.

Probably most eye-opening of them is Campobello, Canadian summer estate of the wealthy Roosevelt family. It was there young Franklin spent idyllic summers sailing and swimming. His first trip there was at the age of one.

He courted Eleanor there, brought his growing family north for summer holidays and in 1921, on just such a vacation, contracted the polio that left him seriously crippled.

The term "cottage" is certainly an understatement. But when one considers size and stature of Roosevelt's year-round Hyde Park mansion north of New York City, it becomes a more understandable description.

Franklin's mother, Sara Roosevelt, acquired the summer residence in 1909. It had originally been built in 1897 by a wealthy Boston woman who got to know the Roosevelt family when they vacationed nearby in another cottage they had bought in 1885.

Her will contained an option for Sara Roosevelt to buy the home totally furnished for $5,000. The site's five acres overlooked New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy. After Sara Roosevelt's death, this property (along with Hyde Park) was bequeathed to son Franklin.

Now over a century later, it still has the appearance of a woodland resort. No wonder . . . with no fewer than 18 bedrooms, it's larger than some north country hotels. Six of those bedrooms were for family, a further six for guests and six for servants.

Scenically situated near the water's edge, its location on this small island is not the easiest or most accessible of the presidential favourites. But it's definitely one of the most well-known and today a most unusual Roosevelt-Campobello International Park co-administered by both the Canadians and Americans.

Just off the Maine coast, it's necessary to pass through Canadian customs en route here. There's a bridge from Lubec, Maine, but the ferry ride gives one more a sense of history.

This traveller had driven down on a day trip from St. John's, New Brunswick. However, most visitors arrive from the south, reaching this idyllic spot which is about a six-hour drive north of Boston.

Unlike some of their equally wealthy contemporaries who chose the glitter, glamour and social life of Newport, Rhode Island as a vacation retreat, the Roosevelts preferred what they described as a simple life at Campobello. Eleanor aptly described it as "this quietest of places".

From 1909 to 1921 when Roosevelt was stricken with polio, the family arrived for the summer. With them were a nurse as well as a governess for the children. Some servants were brought up from Hyde Park, others hired on the island.

Those who visit Campobello come away impressed with its simple comforts, not unlike those of a Wisconsin, Minnesota or Maine lodge. Franklin's visits were more occasional after contracting polio, returning only three times during his 12-year presidency. He then more often sought out warm springs locations.

But Eleanor continued to visit, her last time just a few months before she died in 1962. Not until 1952, ten years before her death, did the two-and-a-half-storey "cottage" get electricity. Until then, kerosene lamps and candles provided light, a wood and coal stove was used for cooking and seven fireplaces heated rooms.

But there was always running water inside and how it got there brought back an almost forgotten childhood memory. I'd always been told my family's historic homestead built in 1847 was one of the first in the area to have indoor plumbing.

I remembered a tower covered in wood clapboard next to the coach house that provided the gravity flow of water that had been brought up there via pump from a well, and then into the house house. A wonderfully large vintage claw-footed bathtub still remains in our house from that era, but the tower is long gone after arrival of village water systems.

Lo and behold, there such a water tower stood over to the side of the Roosevelt house for just such a purpose. Cedar shingle siding seems appropriate for the house and the large porch is a particularly relaxing site from which to view a scenic vista of rocky coves and inlets.

Four neighbouring cottages are also part of the park. Visitors can linger in the Edmund Muskie Visitors Centre viewing informative videos, tour the house, then roam extensive grounds. The bay is a good place to look for porpoises, dolphins and whales. Even harbour seals were sighted as we approached via ferry.

The house is open Memorial Day Weekend through October's Columbus Day, but grounds open daily all year. Admission is free; www.compobello.com

The man who became President upon Roosevelt's sudden death was someone who genuinely preferred the simple life. Travellers to Key West, Florida can learn about that first hand when they visit his "Winter White House" at the old naval base there. It's well worth the time.

BUT to learn about Harry Truman's Midwest roots, the place is Independence, Missouri. The classic, attractive, 14-room white Victorian homestead that he moved into as a newlywed was actually built by wife Bess' maternal grandfather in the late 1800s. Truman continued living there until his death and locals joke he just "commuted to Washington". It's now a National Historic Site.

This growing site also includes adjacent homes of Bess Truman's brothers and that of an aunt. The family farm where Truman worked as a young man from 1906 to 1917 is also now part of the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site.

The farm once covered 600 acres in nearby Grandview, Missouri and the farm homestead, built in 1894 by his maternal grandmother, is restored on five acres of the original farm where his mother always insisted "he got his common sense".

Independence and neighbouring Kansas City played an important role in the frontier west and many historic sites from that era remain. Among them is home of the co-founder of the Pony Express and the jail where Jesse James' brother Frank and William Clark Quantrell of Quantrell's Raiders were incarcerated. It and the adjoining marshal's home dating to 1859 were carefully restored.

His grave site and the Truman Library and Museum are also in Independence. Permanent museum displays include a replica of his oval office and a film offering an in-depth look at his life.

When Texan Lyndon Johnson became the 36th President, the French ambassador, apparently more comfortable in eastern elite circles, disparagingly commented that he supposed now we would have "le barbecue".

Perhaps if he'd spent some time at one of those Texan cookouts down among the cottonwoods in the Hill County, he would have been embarrassed to admit how enjoyable an experience it really was.

There was a time this traveller spent so much time down there writing about the region that the state's governor formally proclaimed me an "Honorary Texan" with an appropriate plaque. That was just before he was indicted, something that also happens with some frequency in Illinois!

To Lyndon Johnson, Texas was truly the centre of the universe. His family's heritage there is remembered in a number of places, all of them worth a visit. And because there are so many of them, it will take a while.

For those who would like to follow his life in chronological order, a good place to start is the National Park Service Visitor Centre at Johnson City where his boyhood home is located. Just west of it is a group of vintage buildings grandfather Sam Ealy Johnson and a great uncle built.

To get oriented location wise, LBJ country is about 50 miles west of Austin (where his presidential library is located) and 60 miles north of San Antonio.

The Johnson ranch house where he died in 1973 is at Stonewall, Texas. The National Park Service offers bus tours of the working ranch where Hereford cattle still have the Bar J Bar Brand.

The tour passes by the one-room Junction School he attended at the age of four and stops by his reconstructed birthplace and the quiet family cemetery by the banks of the Pedernales River. Shaded by native trees, he's buried there along with his ancestors.

Johnson rebuilt his birthplace in 1964, furnished it with family memorabilia reflecting that 1908 date and used it as a guest cottage.

Lyndon Johnson State Park, over 700 acres, is nearby LBJ's ranch and includes vintage buildings recalling the lifestyle of an earlier age. A living-history farm there features residents in period clothing performing farm chores. Although LBJ's ranch house isn't open to the public (Mrs. Johnson still lives there), you'll see its exterior on the tour, an attractive two-storey building of native limestone and wood with shutters and broad verandas overlooking the Pedernales River. My trips there have tended to be in spring when the wildflowers so beloved by Mrs. Johnson were in glorious bloom.

You're very near Fredericksburg, a unique German settlement that dates back to 1846 established by Baron von Meusebach and named after Prince Frederick of Prussia, one of the settlement's sponsors. It's another place you'll want to linger.

Johnson wasn't the only one with a taste for barbecue. When Nelson Rockefeller was Vice President, I attended a fun barbecue at his official residence in Washington, DC. On the menu were hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans some of the makings of a Texas cookout.

We'd previously met at a Republican National Convention I'd attended . . . first at his cocktail reception (cash bar, of course. Even millionaire candidates have to raise campaign funds!) Then at the convention refreshment stand where we were both savouring ice cream bars. Which shows even the most formal politician can have an informal side.

WHICH reminds me of a very fortuitous near-miss in my own life. When I was 23 years old, my father strongly encouraged me to run for the state legislature from our district. The long-time holder of that seat had died, leaving a vacancy and my father thought I had credentials for the job.

Our family had been well-known and respected there well over a century, and I'd been one of my college's star debaters competing on assorted campuses, very able to hold my own. He was confident I could win. Sorry to disappoint him, I declined because I very definitely did not want a career in politics.

Thank goodness, because another young woman my age ran, was elected and eventually rose high up the political ladder to Washington, leading what appeared to be a very regimented and boring life. She definitely had a far less interesting and exciting one than I chose!

4 Next week: Geography 101