Thursday, May 21, 2009

May 20, 2009

Mark Twain and Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

Hannibal.  Mark Twain.  A number of buildings including the Clemens family home are preserved as they were in Samuels’ time.  There is an excellent museum and a visitor center both filled with information on Mark Twain.  The town still has a small mid-west feel and the river is right there with boats and barges going by.

Mark Twain’s boyhood home (for real).  The infamous white fence on the right.

 

This is a hoot.  Across the street from Twain’s house is a house they call the Becky Thatcher house.  It is the house of a girl Sam Clemens had a crush on who would be the model for Becky Thatcher.  The house is undergoing some restoration.  Guess what the guy in the picture below is doing.  He is painting fence boards.  He is not a plant.  He really was painting white fence boards.  He offered to let us help for a dollar a board.  :)

The Mississippi River from Hannibal levy.

A couple more hours of driving and we are at another Missouri state park.  Same result.  Wish we had time to stay longer.  We will know better next time.  After parking the carbus we headed east in the GV to St. Louis.  This is a large city with BIG freeways.  The one we needed was closed and required a major detour.  I was a little worried about this because we needed to reach our goal before it closed for the day.  No problem.  Got there, parked, walked through the park, went through security, bought our tickets, and fifteen minutes later we were on top of the Gateway Arch.  Indescribably cool. 

Shadow of arch from guess where.

Busch Stadium

 

St. Louis

Mississippi River and Illinois

Lagoon at base of arch

Inside observation area at top.

Inside actual pod we rode to top and down.  Five people to a pod, nine pods to the train.  Trains go every ten minutes.  Picture on right is dummy pod for photo purposes.

We spent 15-20 minutes looking and taking pictures and then went back down to tour the museum.  Everything(except the arch) is under ground.  Museum, tickets, security, store, two theaters, tram stations, and NPS information desk are all below ground.  Above ground is all grass.  We spent another 20 minutes above ground taking pictures of arch and surroundings. 

   

This is sort of an optical illusion.  Shiny half is actually farthest away.

This composite needs some work but you get the idea.

arch

The park is on the banks of the Mississippi River.  Today, the river is three feet above flood level.  Several shoreline tourist sites and parking lots are under water. 

Makes one BIG river.

Proof that we made it as far east as the Mississippi River and touched it  :)

DSC00623



No comments:

Post a Comment