We arrived in Hannibal on a bright sunny day. By the time we hooked up in the campground, the clouds were coming in. We stayed at the Mark Twain Cave Campgrounds, which is right outside of Hannibal on route 79. There are two caves there you can explore. We’ve been in enough caves, so we skipped these. The next morning we were planning to do our tourist thing by riding on the trolley and getting off at the stops where we wanted to visit, but it rained all day long. We stayed in the RV, read books and just took it easy.
Missouri, Cornfields, Silos and the Missouri River. We’re not in IL anymore.
After spending the entire day in the RV, enduring the rain, collecting rain water for washing hair, we decided no matter what we were going out the next day! The rain pretty well stopped, but boy did it get cold. Below 40 degrees at night and only in the low 40’s during the day. We dug out all the cold weather gear—thermal knits included, and caught the 10:15 am trolley for our ride around Hannibal. We get the history of the area that way and figure out the places we want to revisit on our own.
Our trolley driver was a very nice lady who told us about the prominent people of Hannibal, the Riverview park that was donated by one man where the statue of Mark Twain is located.
We drove by the very first statues ever made of fictional characters and by the lighthouse that never guided any ships. Lots of interesting stories. She also pointed out where we could go to visit Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) boyhood home, Tom Sawyer’s home, the drugstore where Sam worked as a boy and the printing shop where he learned about printing and writing.
We took the trolley back to the campground, had lunch and grabbed our nice warm car for an afternoon of visiting the museum and historical homes and workplaces.
We went to the museum first. It covered a couple of floors with some original Norman Rockwell paintings and sketches of scenes from Tom Sawyer. The above scene was in the center of the museum and seems to pick up the theme of the Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn books.
Next we walked through the rebuilt Huckleberry Finn home.
The photo below shows how it looked before it was restored. I’m sure it wasn’t much better in real life.
Young Sam Clemens lived with his family in a nice home. His father died when he was a young boy, and his Mom had to raise her children alone.
This is the building where the law office was located and even a small court house. Not the plush offices of Lawyers today!
Samuel went to work at Grant’s Drug Store when he was a young boy. He started sweeping and cleaning.
All of the medicine was compounded right in the store. Some of it was almost 75% alcohol. It did make you feel better! Below on the right are baby bottles. You fill them from the side and then cork them off. I’m sure the nipples were rubber. Very unusual.
After touring the homes and businesses we stopped at the Old Barn Theater and saw a one man show. He talked about things that Mark Twain would talk about and told stories. He even looks a lot like Mark Twain would have looked. It was an 1 1/2 hour show and very well done. After the show we took ourselves out to dinner and home to the RV. It didn’t rain on us all day—so it was a good day!
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