WHERE MISSOURI’S HIGHWAY 36 MEETS THE MISSISSIPPI was our home base for a week. Hannibal, Missouri’s Mark Twain Cave & Campground was spacious and a short drive to all I wished to discover. This small town is vivid in my memory due to Tom Sawyer and his successful fence painting party; along with Becky Thatcher; Huck Finn and his friend, Jim who explored the muddy Mississippi on a raft. Like Twain, I also grew up near the Mississippi but in another century, another city. Another difference? Mark Twain will forever be known for his famous novels of life on the Mississippi while I simply enjoy writing Airstream travelogues that will put a smile on our faces someday when we hang up our keys. (www.CampDawg.com)
Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain lived in Hannibal from age 4-17. A very successful writer later in time, he also had a friendship with President U. S. Grant, one of my 19th century heroes. It was Twain who was ultimately responsible for kickstarting Grant’s ‘Personal Memoirs’, one of the most famous memoirs ever written by a general, next to Julius Caesar. General Grant completed his two volume memoirs and died in upstate New York just days later from throat cancer in 1885.
Hannibal is also a town with a myriad of murals which I always enjoy. With so much history on the banks of this river, my first visit here did not disappoint.
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