August 6, Hannibal MO Kansas City, Colby KS

Not too early of a start because we had to wait until the Mark Twain House and Museum opened at 9:00.  We drove into the Hannibal historic district, and found the museum a few moments after it had opened.  There was much information about Mark Twain’s life in Hannibal as a child, what the town was lie at that point, and especially its connection with Mississippi River traffic.  A highlight of the museum was an exhibition of Original Norman Rockwell illustrations used in an edition of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  Rockwell came to Hannibal to get his inspiration and donated these drawings to the museum later on. 

We then walked over to Mark Twain (or really Samuel Clemens) boyhood home.  We also visited the home of Twain’s boyhood friend who became the inspiration for Huck Finn.  They did a good job of restoring the buildings and providing really good interpretation.

We also each took our turn white washing the picket fence as that happened in Tom Sawyer.  We had to take that photo.

Dick was drawn away, just as people had been at Twain’s time, to the sound of the calliope music.  He was transported back into time thinking of how people would have been drawn out of the town to greet the riverboat as it pulled up to the landing.  He could especially picture this; because he had the opportunity in 1968 to take a weeklong riverboat cruise on the Delta Queen with his grandfather.  In each town, the calliope would play and the people would appear.  Dick started to stand right by the calliope player and talk with him as he played.  He lost time of how many times he did that.  This was an extra sweet experience as those memories came flooding back.

Then in the car, and on to the next site:  Mark Twain’s birthplace, 40 miles west of Hannibal.  You really had to want to get there; it was pretty much out in the boondocks in Florida, MO.

To our surprise, we found the Mark Twain Shrine, which had been built around the cabin in which Samuel Clemens had been born.  We enjoyed another great movie, and seeing some furniture that had originally been in the Clemens’s home in Hartford.  We also learned that Samuel Clemens served for about 2 weeks in a Missouri militia, which all retreated and when home.  They did this when they heard that US Grant was coming to attack the militia.  Maybe that was a really good decision.  Twain said that he knew more about retreating than the guy who invented retreating.  This area was the very first that Grant was in command during the Civil War.

Patti was also interested in seeing that Mark Twain had written a book about Christina Science and seemed well acquainted with Mary Bake Eddy.  Fascinating.

As we were driving west across Missouri, we were struck by how stunted the corn was and even saw some fields had already been harvested obviously with no corn to sell, but needing to get it out of the field.  Sad to see this farmland in such a dried up state.

Late afternoon took us to St. Joseph Missouri and The Pony Express Museum.  The Pony Express was started in 1861?, just as the Civil War was looming. They were instrumental in providing timely information to California which resulted in CA voting for Lincoln in 1 860.  Lincoln's presidential victory was reported by Pony Express to the East Coast.  

 Previous to the Pony Express, news could reach CAL in a matter of three months or more.  The pony Express entrepreneurs promised they could get news passed by a serious of relay riders to CA in only 10 days.  There were about 80 riders who braved the heat of summer and the snows of winter, attacks by outlaws and Native Americans.  The advertisement called for young men, orphans preferred.  The riders ranged in age from 11 to 40 years old, most of them being late teens.  Letters and information got to the end of the railroad or telegraph lines in St. Josephs, and then were sent off, with return mail; coming back the other direction. 

This was state of the art communication for about 19 months, until the transcontinental telegraph was completed and it became outmoded.  BUT, the carrying of letters was not replaced until the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

We very much enjoyed learning more details about this venture, and found, not to our surprise at this point, that there were connection to the Civil War with the Pony Express, including many of the riders becoming soldiers for both the North and the South.

Traveling just a few miles south and crossing into Kansas at Atchison Kansas, we saw signs for Amelia Earhart’s birthplace.  This fit with our study of flight and the Wright Brothers, so we took a quick detour to view her grandparent’s lovely home overlooking the Missouri River.  Although the home (now a museum) was not open, we enjoyed looking at the dedication tiles from various members of the Ninety-Nines, a women’s pilot organization of which Amelia Earhart was the first president.   

We again had the opportunity to watch a beautiful sunset.  Of course we had to comment on how we were driving off into the sunset.  We slept that evening in the coolness of night at a rest area in western Kansas.