A Photographic Journey through Hannibal, MO

    After leaving the Gateway Arch Laurie and I spent a couple of days in Hannibal, MO. After nearly two full days driving or sleeping in the car, having three nights/two full days in one place felt like a godsend. Hannibal is famous for one reason, it was the boyhood home of Mark Twain. Thanks to the young Twain (Samuel Clemens was his real name) Hannibal is a tourist town on the Mississippi River ninety minutes north of St Louis. 

   There is a lot to do in Hannibal and if I wrote and explained every attraction this would be long enough where you'd stop reading or scroll down and get overwhelmed and never start.  The first night we stayed in a Motel 6 where we were happy for beds and a hot shower. The next two nights we stayed at a campground at the Mark Twain Cave complex. The cave and campground are three miles from downtown Hannibal. Since the campground is private, it was fairly expensive. I think we paid forty dollars a night for a tent site. There are plenty of motel options in town.  

   Probably the biggest attraction in town is the Mark Twain Cave. It was the first thing we did. As a boy, Twain played in this cave. It inspired many of the scenes in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Tom and Becky got lost in the cave and Tom saw Injun Joe in the cave. 

One of the minor things on my bucket list was to
go to a place Jesse James had been. I hadn't realized
Jesse used this cave as a hideout after one of 
his robberies. His name is signed in the cave.

   The cave complex is definitely for tourists. There is wine tasting which we did not do. There is a trolley that you can take through town and there is a Mark Twain Impersonator. We did the latter two. Mark Twain was really the first stand up comedian. He travelled the world with his routine. The impersonator was awesome. He talked for fifty minutes. There were parts I laughed uncontrollably. No photos. 

   The trolley ride was great. We went to multiple parts of town I didn't know about including Lover's Leap and Riverview Park. 

There was a cruise ship in town that I thought was going to make the crowds unbearable, but I hardly noticed the passengers. They would be transported from ship to sites by bus.

One thing we really looked forward to was a Riverboat ride on the Mississippi. Mark Twain was a Riverboat Pilot for many years on the river but had to stop when the Civil War broke out. Photos are much better looking at a Riverboat than being on a Riverboat. I took the photos of it the day before our trip.

A grain barge on the river

One of the more interesting places to go is the Mark Twain Boyhood Home. Twain lived here for most of his childhood. Friends of his lived next door that would later become characters in his stories. 

Mark Twain's boyhood home. Not my finest photo.

The real Becky Thatcher's house.

The real Becky Thatcher.
Her real name was Laura

The real Huckleberry Finn's house. His real name was Tom.

If you pay admission to the boyhood home, it includes the Mark Twain Museum a few blocks down. The bottom of the museum is dedicated to books Twain wrote. The second level is artifacts and about his life. There are multiple Norman Rockwell paintings depicting "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" 

Norman Rockwell

Twain's top hat

The man Injun Joe is based on. Apparently
he was a nice guy and not a murderer.

   Another minor thing I have always wanted to do was eat a food that Mark Twain ate. I assumed this would mean apple pie or fried chicken. However, Twain was a foodie and in one of his books he listed all of his favorite foods. The list was over one hundred items long so eating something he ate was pretty easy. In his list he gets as specific as a species of duck (Canvasback) but also included are biscuits, butter, and even cold water. We went to Mark Twain Diner and split a meal of fried chicken, potatoes with gravy, and a biscuit (with butter). We had Peach Cobbler for desert. The diner is famous for homemade Root Beer. I was Twain for an hour.

The best Fried Chicken I've ever had

   One thing I have always wanted to do was catch a catfish and if I could do it out of the Mississippi like old Huck Finn all the better. On our last day I got a few hours fishing in. I bought a one day Missouri license and some worms. I hoped to catch sunfish with the worms and use them for cats. This should have been pretty easy. I didn't need a fifty pounder, just something bigger than a bullhead. I didn't get any catfish but caught two stripers! The one species I can catch in saltwater was the one species I caught in the river. 

A guy snagged a Gizzard Shad and gave it to me. They are great catfish bait because they are oily. I didn't catch any catfish but did take a photo because seeing it was a lifer fish.

Touching the Mississippi

We bought tickets for the cave, trolley, Mark Twain Impersonator, Twain Boyhood Home, and the riverboat. We went out to eat twice getting breakfast at Becky Thatcher Diner on our second day. However, in-between attractions we spent a lot of time walking around town. The town is very quaint. There are many shops dedicated to tourists. There are many bars and restaurants. You can go into the general store and get a FREE ice cream. There is a Tom and Huck statue and a lighthouse you can walk up to climb.

There are many murals around town. They are listed in the Visitor's Guide along with each address. We didn't see them all but saw most of them.

This is probably the most famous mural. 
The boy is Huck Finn. The woman is the
Unsinkable Molly Brown

Molly Brown was from Hannibal. We didn't tour her house but took  a photo of it. She did meet Mark Twain on his last visit to Hannibal.

    There are other famous people from Hannibal. There is a street with murals of all of them. I'll spare you all of the photos I took. There was a baseball Hall of Famer, the first woman to vote, and the voice of Jiminy Cricket

At the opposite ends of town are two views of the River. The north one is Riverview Park. Interestingly, there is a black mutation of Grey Squirrels that live in the park. We saw some but I couldn't get a photo. From the view you can see the island that Tom Sawyer spent three days on. Also in the park is a statue of Mark Twain.

The south view is at Lover's Leap. So named because two young Indians from waring tribes plummeted to their death instead of being apart.

Lover's Leap

As you walk the streets you will see many quotes from Mark Twain or characters in his books. For the life of me I don't know why my photos of them came out so terrible.

 

 I loved Hannibal, MO. I enjoyed every single thing we did. If I ever went back, I'm not saying I'd do everything again, but I'm glad we did everything once. I'd do the cave again for sure. I would get the fried chicken at the Mark Twain Diner multiple times. I had a great time.

Gateway Arch National Park

    Laurie and I just did a ten day trip through the Midwest. The trip centered around a place called Snake Road in Illinois. We planned the trip around going there. To give us more reasons to go, we planned on a few days at other places in the Midwest. One of them was the Gateway Arch. The Gateway Arch is now designated a National Park ( with a capital N and P). It was completed in 1965 after two years of construction. 

  The Gateway Arch in St. Louis was our first real destination. We left home Thursday night and drove as much as we could sleeping at rest areas. We made it forty miles outside of St Louis Friday night and slept at a rest area until morning. We left for the Arch about 8 am.

Seeing the Gateway Arch is quite easy. It is 630 feet tall. It is the tallest steel monument in the Western Hemisphere and only the Eiffel Tower is taller in the world. We could easily see it as we we were driving in from Illinois. The view of it is spectacular as we crossed the Mississippi River. 

   There isn't a parking lot at the monument. You can either look for metered on street parking downtown a couple blocks away or use one of the parking garages also a couple blocks away. We used a parking garage that cost us about ten dollars. 

You are allowed to go up the arch. We reserved tickets a few days in advance. There are little tram cars that take you to the very top. The cost is a ridiculous $19 for an adult ( Washington Monument is $1.50). You are only on top looking out the windows for seven minutes. None the less, this was a once in a lifetime trip so up we went. There is no arguing that the the tram to the top was fun. Being on top was also cool. As expected, our seven minutes flew by.

Looking west into St Louis 

Looking down and east at the Mississippi
 River and Illinois.

   Before our 10:30 tram ride we took photos of the arch as best we could. The morning sun comes from the east and the Mississippi River stops you from getting the arch in view with the sun at your back.  I tried to take some of the less famous views of the arch such as standing directly under it. The truth was I was getting a little frustrated knowing I wasn't going to get a wallhanger photo of the arch. While the arch would be in perfect light in the late afternoon we wouldn't be there. We only had a few hours before we were going to our motel in Hannibal, MO. I was starting to accept that my photos were not going to be the postcard quality I imagined. 

   After we got down from the tram we were thinking about heading to Hannibal but decided to walk around some. The sun had made its way to the south and it was clear the light was different than when we went up. The arch is in the middle of a huge grass field. The legs of the arch are six hundred feet apart. On both sides of the field are walkways with small ponds and and wooded areas making the park fairly long. We walked toward the south side so the sun would be at our back when we turned around. As soon as we walked just a couple hundred yards we left the crowds behind. While there were hundreds of people under the arch, in line for the tram, and in the museum, we saw one guy on the south side of the park, a local exercising. 

   

View from the South Pond

   We came across the South Pond and without a cloud in the sky, it made an amazing reflecting pool. We took a bunch of photos from different points on the pond then just sat in the grass for ten minutes taking it all in. I'd have sat for two hours if we weren't on a time restraint. I was much happier with my photos and when we left, I was in a much better place mentally. 

   Things to know-

   You already know parking is not on site and you will have to walk a couple of blocks. 

   Besides paying to go up in the arch, there is also a movie that I believe costs seven dollars. There is also a riverboat ride. You can buy any of these three things or buy a combo ticket. We just went up the arch because we had a riverboat ride planned a couple days later.

   There is a cafeteria which had decent food under the arch.

   There is a great free museum that explains western expansion across the USA and also the making of the arch.

The National Park website is  https://www.nps.gov/jeff/index.htm

The website to buy tickets ishttps://tickets.gatewayarch.com/webstore/shop/viewitems.aspx?cg=cat&c=gartkt

Many more photos below from different angels

A view straight down from the top
I love the shadow of the arch

Salaman-day!

 

Red Backed Salamander

   I had another fantastic day herping. I had a nice day planned doing some fishing and some herping. I tried but didn't catch any fish. I did see a large blitz but it was way off shore and did not come in while I was there. The herping more than made up for it.

   I found my first salamanders of the year today. I lifted a rock off of the beaten path and low and behold there they were. I took  a couple of photos and put them back where I found them. They were Red Backed Salamanders which is the most common species in the Northeast. Despite one having a very distinct red back and the other being all dark grey they are the same species. 

   After I looked at them I ran into my friend Linda. She had a slow day birding so I told her about the salamanders and showed them to her. She told me she had a salamander under one of the pots in her garden and described it to me. It was a Spotted Salamander. I told her I had never seen one so if it was there when she got home to please let me know and I'd go to her house.

 

Spotted Salamander

   She called me twenty minutes later that it was there. As promised, I drove up to her house. It was a little guy about four inches. It was covered in dirt and not the most photogenic amphibian you will ever see but he was there! I took a bunch of photos and put the flower pot gently over him again.  

And, ho-hum, I found the Eastern Milk Snake again today.

  Below are more photos. Spotted Salaamder has spots. The Red backed do not. The one that looks like a snake is a snake. There is also a Praying Mantis and a frog below. 

The darker Red Bellied Salamander

Praying Mantis