what about the plastic animals?

Leaving Twain Town

After a refreshing Mark Twain Pepsi, and an effervescent root beer at the Mark Twain Dinette, it was time to head out of Hannibal.  We could have taken the train, there is a small station named after Twain's brother, Lionel, but we had a rental car.

To get to Illinois you drive on Mark Twain Avenue and cross the river on the Mark Twain Bridge.  Had I taken a photo looking south you would have seen the Riverboat Mark Twain and the Mark Twain Caves beyond.  Instead I was looking forward to the Land of Lincoln.

Tom Sawyer Days

There was plenty of frog jumping and fence painting activities going on in downtown Hannibal during Tom Sawyer Days.

Life On The Mississippi

What would a trip to Hannibal, Missouri be without a riverboat cruise?

Landlocked! 

Oh, wait, that was a rhetorical question not a dumb joke.  We took an hour-long cruise on the riverboat Mark Twain.  First up to the Mark Twain Bridge, then down along the middle of the river to approximately where the Mark Twain cave (yes, everything in Hannibal is named after Twain) is located, finally returning up along the eastern shore.

There was entertainment and informative tour-guiding along the way but mostly I remember it being oppressively humid and 98 degrees outside.

At The Twain House and Museum

Hannibal is famous because it is the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.  We had the good fortune of visiting during the annual Tom Sawyer Days celebration.  More on that later.  Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain have a larger than life presence in Hannibal.

Samuel Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri but moved to Hannibal as a little kid.  Well, his family moved to Hannibal and Sam tagged along with them.  That's the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens in the top picture, a few respectable blocks away from the river and across the street from Mr. Clemens law office.  Becky Thatcher's house is just up the street!

I had to blow up the plaque because it fascinates me.  Much Andy Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina has transformed itself to become more like the fictional town of Mayberry, Hannibal has become more like Twain's St. Petersburg.  Tom Sawyer was a product of Mark Twain's imagination.  Sawyer may have been drawn from people that Twain knew, but he was a work of fiction.  The plaque, having the imprimatur of authority by resembling an official historic marker transforms Sawyer into an actual person.  Sorry for writing like an academic!

Another intersesting thing to note:  the fence boards next to the house and in the museum are vertical, but look at the illustrations in the latter.  Horizontal boards!

The museum was enjoyable.  It includes scenes from several of Twain's books, a replica steamboat pilot's house and a collection of illustrations Norman Rockwell made for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. 

One interesting thing I learned at the museum is shown in that last photo.  Because writing a novel longhand was often tedious and involved many corrections, Twain developed a method where he would use cut-out paper dolls as stand-ins for the characters in his stories.  For example in the scene above he is holding up Tom Sawyer.  The dolls that are knocked over on the table represent the people who fainted in church when Tom appeared at his own funeral.  Twain had an excellent memory.  Instead of writing and revising on paper he would act out the various parts, giving each character their own voice,  until he got a scene down to where he liked it, before committing the story to paper.  Pretty interesting.

Inside Planet Earth

It probably goes without needing mention, but for the sake of completeness let me say that July 4th weekend along the MIssissippi is hot and humid.  Such was the case when we were there so an hour underground at 52 degrees was welcome.

The Mark Twain Cave is Missouri's oldest show cave.  The cave was discovered in the early 19th century.  In the late 1840s Hannibal doctor Joseph McDowell used the cave as a laboratory for his experiments with human corpses, including his 14-year old daughter.  Families from Hannibal would picnic in and near the cave to take in the natural air conditioning.  In 1876 two kids got separated from their schoolmates and spent several days in the cave trying to avoid a homicidal injun.  Jesse James laid low in the cave after robbing a cave in 1879.

Today the cave is more sedate.  There's a one-hour tour led by a local teenager spouting cave history and facts as well as unfunny jokes.  This reminds me of the first law of cave tours:  Cave tours are best when led by teenagers spouting puns and unfunny jokes.  The worst cave tours are given by adults who take their caves way too seriously.

The tour was pretty good.  We saw a lot of the spots mentioned in Tom Sawyer.  There were so many twists, turns and unexplored passageways that it was easy to imagine Tom and Becky getting lost.

The Road To Hannibal

On our second day in Missouri Donna and I headed north to Hannibal.  Or so we thought.  At some point we came across a "Road Closed Ahead" sign.  After the second road closed sign there still wasn't a detour posted.  Luckily a guy driving a pickup noticed our hesitation and offered to show us the alternate route.  There may have been detour signs along the way but all we saw for the next eight miles was dust.

The Old Courthouse Rotunda

I don't really have much to say about the old courthouse in St. Louis.  It's really pretty on the inside.  The rotunda was all decked out for a naturalization ceremony.  We walked in just about when several dozen people were taking their citizenship oath.  As expected from a National Park Service site there was a very informative exhibit outlining the tangled history of the Dred Scott case and putting that case in the context of what the country was going through in the 1850s.

Views From the Arch

Not a week before visiting the Gateway Arch I had climbed up to the Statue of Liberty's crown with my sister and nieces.  The two experiences could not have been more different.  At the statue the National Park Service lets small groups of people climb up the stairs every 15 minutes or so.  Once at the crown you can rest and have the place for yourself for a few minutes.  At the top of the Arch you step out of the tram and onto the observation deck of chaos.

To the east the Mississippi was slightly over flood stage.  The flooding messed with our plan to walk the trail along the river.  That was probably for the best as the weather was really hot and humid while we were there.

To the west is the courthouse where Dred and Harriet Scott filed suit to win their freedom in 1846.  It is also where Virginia Minor filed suit in 1872 after the registrar denied her the right to register to vote.

The Gateway Arch

Marie was right! The mystery object earlier this week is indeed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

Over the fourth of July weekend my friend Donna and I met up in St. Louis for a holiday weekend of Americana.  Our first stop was the arch and the rest of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.  The arch has a timeless look about it.  You would almost think it was there before St. Louis was settled, but it is actually fairly new.  Well, it's newer than me, which makes it a youngster.

To get to the top of the arch you follow the tour guide to a tiny little door.  While waiting you chuckle to yourself and wonder if a dozen clowns will come out when the doors open.  When the doors open and you see that the little pod (that's a model in the last photo) seats five adults you chuckle no more!  It makes for a cozy, four minute, half-escalator, half-elevator, half-ferris wheel, ride to the top.

Back on the ground we were treated to a practice run for the air show that was to take place that weekend.

Views from the top coming next.

Busch Stadium From Above

This is a week late but scrolling through my photo library this evening I noticed I took this picture of Busch Stadium, home of the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals, back in July from the top of the Gateway Arch.