The Old Man River....He Just Keeps Rolling Along...

We have arrived home, but the last three days of our Branson trip has not presented the opportunity to blog, although I had the pictures all ready to go up. When Thursday dawned, we were ready to head north. We had a wonderful fairy-tale time in Branson: eating at wonderful restaurants, watchig creative and fascinating Las Vegas type shows, and enjoying going through some of the craft shops. But we were ready to "get out of Dodge". Heading north to Springfield, MO, we spent the morning going through the biggest Bass Pro Shop I ever saw....indeed: it was the Granddaddy of them all....the first one. Then we began our usual way of traveling....trying to stay off of the freeways and going on secondary roads. Strangely, we found absolutely no campgrounds on this leg of the trip. So, we turned off toward Lousiana.....yes, Louisana, ....Missouri. There we spent the night in "Camp Wal Mart" and then left for 30 miles up to Hannibal, Missouri. Both of these delightful, quaint and historic towns are on the wonderful Mississippi River. I thought this picture really showed the majesty and meandering of the River. Now, these next couple of pictures are in reverse of the cronological order: we came to Lousiana, toured and spent time there, then saw that Hannibal was just 30 miles away, up river. So we traveled along the majestic river and was able to get the beautiful picture above.

Hannibal, Missouri, you must all recall from your high school days, is the boyhood home of Samual Longhorn Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain. We saw his home, the office of his father, the home of his girlfriend, Maggie Thatcher, and on and on.

On a river boat, was where Samuel Clemmens became a river boat pilot. We didn't take a ride on this one...because there were 100's of kids in town....the place was over run by them! We learned that Fridays were good field trip days....oh rats!

Quaint down town Hannibal, with 200 year old buildings. It was nice that many of them had little historical placks on the front of them so that you knew the buildings "heritage".

Of course, no walking tour would be complete without the fence that Tom Sawyer persueded his gang to pay him for the "privilege" of whitewashing. Mark Twain set most of his Tom Sawyer's adventures in the life and town that he was familiar with.

Just down river from Hannibal was Louisiana, Missouri. One town resident we chatted with for a while called it "poverty central"....and it truly was not on the road to anywhere. But one of the big reasons of staying off of the beaten path, we were able to see the wonderful murals that were painted on 20 of the buildings in town.....this eagle was one of the murals. What unsung artists...

These following pictures I just took because they were pretty. We did get to enjoy spring foliage along our trip. We left Waterloo with no flowers out....saw things progressively become greener as we went south. Saw the forests where dogwood grew wild and beautiful trees were in bloom.

The beautiful fully bloomed dog wood flower.....waited a full week to get close up to one of these.

Aaaaah.....the beautifes of God's world. We stopped off in Chicago just in time for Charlie's 5th birthday, and in time to see Kevin's new "toy" car; then off to Granger, IN to visit with the "presidents": Madison, Lincoln, Reagan, and Kennedy. We picked up grandson #1, Justin, to bring him to Waterloo for a friend's funeral.

Tonight Chris and I are beginning our "recuperation"....tee hee.....doing the tons of wash, cleaning out the camper, fixing a couple of things on it....and to start planning for our next adventure.....