Visiting Mark Twain’s boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri
Oct. 20th, 2005|08:33 pm: Yesterday I convinced Tami to spend an entire day with me, driving to Hannibal, Missouri and visiting all of the Mark Twain landmarks. I’ve been really itching to do this for the past week since I plan to move soon and probably won’t have many other opportunities to drive up there. So I got up around 7:00 this morning, went to her house and we started driving there. The drive was just under 2 hours from her house in Jerseyville. We took various highways through Illinois all the way up since there were no convenient interstates to drive on. Crossed the bridge and we were in Hannibal!
The first order of business was lunch since I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. We checked on a bunch of restaurants and settled on the Jumping Frog Cafe. Ate some sandwiches and read some brochures. A mere $8.00 each got us access to buildings all over downtown. Museums, inside Mark Twain’s house, inside Laura Hawkins house and other miscellaneous buildings that I can’t remember. We also went through a really lame (yet amusing) haunted house, we climbed 250 stairs to the lighthouse, hiked around the woods for a short time and then headed back towards downtown.
Stopped at an ice cream parlor for milkshakes and to fill out a bunch of postcards. I think we stopped by a few more places after that, then headed back to the car and started driving home. In all we spent nearly 4 hours in Hannibal and got to see a lot of things. We missed the tour bus since we were so busy with everything else but I don’t really think there’s much we didn’t see. I would have liked to explore the caves and the lake a little, but there’s always next time. I also really want to see the live show, where some actor who looks like Mark Twain does some of his old routines.
The weather was pretty nice for us. A little cold but no rain while we were there. As soon as we got out of town and on the road, it starts pouring. It keeps pouring for much of the trip home. We drove back home on the Missouri side of the Mississippi this time so that the drive didn’t feel like so much backtracking. Got stuck in rush hour traffic once we reached St. Louis which added an extra 30 minutes to the drive, but finally reached my house. Stopped in for a few things, then continued to Jerseyville to drop her off at home.
And that’s my day. I don’t think Tami was quite as into the Mark Twain stuff as me, but she says she plans to read his books again, now that she suddenly knows so much about him. Now it’s time to pack for Orlando which begins tomorrow!
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Me standing in front of Mark Twain’s house. You have to wonder how such a poor family was able to afford that nice vinyl siding. |
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Mark Twain’s house as seen from inside Laura Hawkins’ living room window. (Laura was the inspiration for the Becky Thatcher character) Note how they painstakingly recreated a perfectly authentic-looking bad 19th century paint job on those windows! |
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Tami and I, in front of the lighthouse and exhausted from the 250 stair hike. |
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Stairs leading back to downtown. |
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View of the Mississippi from halfway down from the lighthouse. |
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I think that’s a Tom & Huck statue, next to the steps leading up to the lighthouse. We didn’t bother looking at it too closely. |
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I think this is the first Mark Twain Pepsi machine I’ve ever seen. |
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In the olden days, pay phones were made out of whiskey barrels. Red boxing them was an impossibility during those days. |
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This is the ice cream parlor that we filled out our post cards in. It took forever to get our drinks because of a wild band of Tennessee junior high school kids wrecking havoc inside. |