THURSDAY, 4 MAY 2012

"HOME"WARD BOUND

There were a couple of things on our "to do" list today--see the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and stop in Hannibal MO to see the Mark Twain sites on our way to Freeport.

Jim knew of a park across the Mississippi River in Illinois that provides good photo ops, so we drove there first.

We were going to drive back across the river the arch, but we found a parking lot at a casino located at the base of the Eads bridge which has a pedestrian walkway. The plan was to go up onto the bridge, take a few pictures, then drive over. However, once we got up onto the bridge we decided to walk all the way across and over to the arch. The exercise felt great! 

We got in the line for the ride up to the top around 0850. The visitor's center opened at 0900 and the first ride was at 0910. There weren't too many people in our group up so it wasn't too crowded. However, when we left the line was pretty long-glad we got up in the first group.

Busch Stadium

Even though it was hot and muggy, the walk back across the bridge wasn't too bad because there was a nice breeze. The ride to Hannibal took an hour and a half, and we arrived around noon. It is a quaint little town with many references to Mark Twain. 

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (and Jim Davis!)

Mississippi River

This is a quote I saw on a t-shirt in a store front: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." -Mark Twain


We walked around for a couple of hours while Jim took pictures, ate lunch at a pub, then headed for "home," Freeport IL, where I grew up. We pulled in just after 7 PM, met up with Hank and Linda, had dinner at Culver's, then settled into the cabin for a good night's sleep. We are looking in to sleeping in tomorrow morning!