Hanging Out in Hannibal!

Living in Missouri, I am pretty familiar with Samuel Clemens, a.k.a Mark Twain.
I visited Hannibal, Missouri where he grew up on a high school field trip when I was a freshman.
That was a long time ago. :)
This past summer, Evan read Tom Sawyer for school and did a report on Mark Twain.
I thought it would be great to take a little trip up to Hannibal this summer for a little enrichment of his project.
Unfortunately, we ran out of time!
But when my parents mentioned they were going to take a weekend trip up to Hannibal this September with my niece and nephews, Evan and I decided to tag along. And Erin got a much anticipated weekend home with Mike for some one on one time. :)

Evan and I drove down Friday night ahead of my parents. We stayed in the same hotel. Me in one room with Evan and my niece. my parents and nephews were in another room. Before they arrived, Evan and walked around downtown Hannibal together and found a little pizza place for a late snack.

On Saturday morning, the first thing we did after breakfast was visit his home. We saw "Becky Thatcher's home" which is what they call it, next. But actually it is the home of the woman who inspired the character of Becky.

 

Family photo :)

Evan liked this sign because it was one of his favorite parts in the book. 

And I loved the quote by Mark Twain in this room in the house.

"I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if  a person ever really ceases to feel young - I mean for a whole day at a time."

 I find it so true!

And then we headed down to the river.

To throw rocks

And just hang out for a bit.

 And catching a sweet moment between my parents. 43 years of marriage and still going strong! :)

Next up, the cave! 

The sign is from the 70's but the red is the route the cave tour still takes today.

Lots of passages like this nice and lit as we walked along until about halfway through our tour when something happened to a transformer and the whole cave complex lost power. Yep, no lights in the cave except for the guide's flashlight, three small extra mini flashlights she had in her pocket, and our cell phones. Yay, flashlight app! 

But we made it through and it was actually pretty fun!

After lunch, we headed over to the Mark Twain museum which was actually pretty cool in an interactive way. Not big, but interesting enough.

This was Evan's favorite room. 

They had his actual desk and chair that he liked to write from on display as well.

And fun fact: Every year a boy and girl are picked to represent Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher for tourist and publicity engagements. I think it was in 2009 that our cave tour guide was Becky Thatcher. Her portrait is hanging in the "Becky Thatcher" house. :)

And a not so fun fact: Yes, as I was 40 minutes outside of Hannibal on our way home (it's only about a 2 hour ride from our house), I realized that I left my suitcase back at the hotel. For some reason it just hit me! We had been saying goodbye to the rest of their family outside their room and I just walked off leaving it there. I was carrying a backpack, purse and the snack bag.

Thankfully, the hotel had it behind the desk. I called first before turning around and driving all the way back. Ugh. It added an extra hour and twenty minutes to the drive home, but Evan handled it well. He was very gracious about the whole thing. :)

Otherwise, it was a great trip!

And if you made it this long, I just want to share that I have a blog post up at Craft Your Nest with the winner of my stamp challenge and a new challenge involving Pinterest. :)

Thanks for coming by today!