July 31, 2011 Kansas City, MO to Springfield, IL

Today is mostly a driving day although we do manage to do a little sightseeing in Hannibal, MO along the way. Hannibal is famous for being Mark Twain’s boyhood home and the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Tom and Huck with Clark, Lewis and John

We also see a real replica of a fence that is just like the one that Tom Sawyer got his friends to paint.
The virtual fence

After a horrible lunch at the Mark Twain Dinette, we walk down to the Mississippi River, Mark Twain’s Mississippi River.
The Mark Twain River

And we look at the Mark Twain statue overlooking the Mark Twain River.
Mark Twain looking out over his river

And the Mark Twain riverboat.
Mark Twain riverboat

I guess the fine people of Hannibal, MO are very proud of their native son. The rest of Hannibal seems to have fallen on hard times. The town is full of old Victorian houses but few have been restored to their former glory. Many storefronts are empty. If it weren’t for Tom and Huck, no one would probably stop here. It’s also incredibly hot and humid.

We stop at a grocery store and pick up some fixings for tonight’s dinner. Our hotel room in Springfield has a kitchenette. However, when we go to make dinner we realize that there is no cooktop so making dinner is impossible. Are the gods working actively to sabotage my diet? So we go to Saputo’s which is a red Italian restaurant and eat all the wrong things. And we have our first totally Eastern salad, all iceberg lettuce with a couple of tomato pieces thrown in. Humidity and iceberg lettuce, I’m almost home!

Eastern salad!

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