Say Hannibal, Mo. to almost any American and immediately Mark Twain will come to mind. Being as we are in Hannibal, we, of course, had to get our Mark Twain fix. After another great breakfast (there are big advantages to staying in B&Bs), we wandered a few blocks down and started our Twain journey at the Mark Twain Museum (one of two in Hannibal).
Hannibal has done a great job of rehabbing the home of Mark Twain, the home of the family whose son Tom Blankenship was the basis for Huck Finn,
the fence next to Tom Sawyer’s house (actually the Clemens home),
and many other of the buildings from the time when young Samuel Clemens was growing up. We also went to the Hannibal Museum and to the second Mark Twain Museum where the full series of Norman Rockwell sketches and drawings about Tom and Huck are housed.
After lunch we drove to Florida, Missouri (about a half hour away) where Samuel Clemens was actually born. His birth house has been moved from the “town” of Florida and placed whole into a Missouri State Park exhibit, thus being preserved and protected.
We headed back to the B&B and after a short rest and email check, we set out on an architectural walk. Hannibal is full of Victorian era homes and most of them are within a 9 block radius of our B&B (which is itself on the tour). It is very hilly in this neighborhood so we got quite a workout. The Autumn colors are becoming more and more striking so instead of Victorian houses we thought we would share some color.
Tomorrow we are going to daytrip to Nauvoo, Quincy and maybe Warsaw, all Mississippi River towns. It should be fun.