Leaving Kansas City, we decided to leave the big interstate corridor and take a more northern route, so we could pass through the small town of Chillicothe, Missouri. Why you ask? Because it perports to be the home of sliced bread. Seems the local bakery was the first commercial user of the loaf-at-a-time bread slicing machine in 1928. They have lots of lovely murals throughout town, including this one below.
John and I had visited Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain, on the Mississippi River, back about 25 or 30 years ago on a motorcycle trip with our friends the Whitneys. Back then we stayed in a delightful former house of ill repute called The Bordello, toured the famous local caves and took a moonlight cruise on the Mississippi on a paddle wheeler. Even I with my terrible memory, remember that as a fun time.
On our 2009 trip we had not been able to locate a local campground on the internet ahead of time so we got a list of three campgrounds from the local visitor centre when we arrived in town. We looked at the closest one, called Injun Joe’s, paid for two nights and then found the site was too small for our rig and the campground looked like it had seen better days. Many permanent trailers is always a warning sign for us.
So we got our money back and went to the second campground, outside of town between the river and the train tracks. It looked a little better, other than that it had rained a lot recently and there were large puddles everywhere. When we paid for two nights (cash only), we hadn’t planned to be awakened every two hours each night by the train whistles, but there you go. Can’t win ‘em all…
As we found out later, the third campground was close to downtown and was ‘big-rig friendly’ so we should have stayed there. A hint for other RV’ers: when booking campgrounds sight unseen, look for the following and you will not often be disappointed – campgrounds should offer free wi-fi, have a 1-800 phone number for reservations and a web site and they should accept payment by credit cards. Any campgrounds not offering these services are often in decline, in our experience anyway.
Our first night in town we went to a play called ‘Mark Twain Himself’ at a small theatre and really enjoyed the solo production. The actor talked to the audience in the manner that Twain did when he was alive - he was a renowned public speaker as well as a writer. We were spellbound for the 80 minute performance.
The campground we stayed in had no internet service but we found an internet café in Hannibal and spent a nice morning there the next day enjoying coffee and warm sticky buns, catching up on emails. There was a little public garden in downtown that featured the work of the local master gardeners so I got some decent flower photos there, two of which are pictured below.
That afternoon we took a one hour guided tour of the Rockcliffe Mansion in Hannibal, shown below. It is a 13,500 square foot American ‘castle’ on the National Register of Historic Homes and was built between 1898 and 1900. Many of the furnishings and personal belongings such as clothing and hats were intact, which made for a very interesting narrated tour.
Several table lamps had been made by Tiffany, as was this impressive stained glass window in the main stairwell. Photography was not allowed inside but we lucked out and ended up having a private tour (because no other visitors showed up) and the guide gave me permission to photograph the window when I asked. You can read more about the house at http://www.rockcliffemansion.com/.
That evening we saw the new Johnny Depp movie ‘Public Enemies’, which was the story of the final days of the American bank robber John Dillinger. I found the style of cinematography very disjointed which kind of spoiled the film for me, but I am always amazed how Depp can reinvent himself with every character he portrays. I almost did not recognize him in this movie.
The next day we moved our rig from Hannibal, Missouri to Springfield, Illinois, in our steady trek homeward in an easterly direction. Below is the bridge we went over to cross the Mississippi River into Illinois and the photo is taken from the Hannibal waterfront.
