Spring Break trip to Hannibal

Josie in the Mark Twain Cave.

Josie tells the story:

Okay. So, full disclaimer here — I don’t claim to remember this trip perfectly, accurately, or entirely. Most of the time I was reading or working on my coloring book.

WELL. I guess I should get to the point. This Spring Break, we (me, Ludi, Mamá, Papá, and The Boy) went to Hannibal, MO.

You probably know Hannibal as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. This city was the inspiration for his stories. The people he knew, the buildings, everything. It’s their big claim to fame, and it lets them slap “Mark Twain” onto literally everything for marketing purposes — except for train stations. Ludi and I were very disappointed to find out there was no “Twain Station”, which would have been funny.

After the two-hour drive to Hannibal and checking into our Airbnb and unpacking, the first “activity” we did was go to the The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum. It’s, like, five museums. One of them is tiny. One of them has a video about Samuel Clemens as a boy having nightmares of a dead body in his room (the way they did it was CREEPY). One of them was a drug store that revealed that some doctor people then were frauds that technically poisoned you (it was actually kind of fun. There was a wheel of fortune with all the ways you could die back then).

We had to climb up some LOTS of stairs to get to the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse. For an accurate depiction, think of when Gollum was leading Frodo and Sam up past Minas Morgul to Cirith Ungol.

There were also several restaurants with a Mark Twain theme. (Editor’s note: The Mark Twain Dinette, Becky Thatcher’s Diner, Mark Twain Brewing Company, etc)

The Mark Twain Cave was cool. There were (tiny) bats, and Jesse James actually camped there. There was also this crazy doctor guy who did the first embalming (sort of) thing that I don’t want to talk about because he was nuts.

I’m sure there was more stuff, but here’s the thing. I wasn’t exactly … paying the closest attention the entire time. I mean, it was interesting and all, but I was busy coloring and reading (The Da Vinci Code, actually. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite book, but I can appreciate some of the codes) and some of this stuff got kind of boring.

Well, that’s my summary of what happened during this year’s Spring Break.

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