Hannibal to Omaha

The above picture gives you a good perspective of the countryside in northern Missouri along the Mississippi River.  Before arriving at Hannibal we drove through the Missouri river towns of  Elsberry, Clarksville, and Louisiana along Highway 79.  I will grant you that traveling on two lane highways is a slow way to go, but John and I are discovering that the interstates have very little to offer in the way of scenery.  On highway 75 we drove through rolling hills of pastureland and woods.  Along some sections of the highway there are also high river bluffs.  The tiny town of Clarksville is dotted with historic Victorian style homes.  Clarksville is where eagles come to feed along the river during the winter months, we have visited the town during its festival of Eagle Days.
In my last posting I wrote about Hannibal, however there is more to do there other than touring the Mark Twain museums.  After our tour of  them we did took some time to step into a few of the antique shops which are located in the historic area.   We found Mrs.Clemmons Antique Store to be especially interesting with its life-size mannequins.  Who would not like to have Elvis Presley or Harry Potter in their home?

We were in Omaha primarily to attend our nephew's graduation.  However, before the ceremony we walked around in the downtown area and had our lunch at the Table Grace Cafe.

We had a delicious lunch of soup, salad, pizza and cinnamon rolls.  Estimated cost for the lunch was $3.98, but one can pay what they want, or nothing at all.  A restaurant like that is certainly needed in many communities of our country, the cafe certainly had many customers when we visited there.  I promised the manager, pictured in the foreground of the picture above, that I would get the word out about Table Grace.

Hannibal, Missouri

We are still located in St.Peters,Missouri.  Last week we made a trip to Omaha to attend the college graduation of our nephew Michael from Creighton University.  It had been at least twenty years or so since we spent any time in Hannibal, so we decided to take an extra day to see the town again. 

Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens), America's best-loved author spent thirteen years of his childhood in this town.  He was born in 1935 and once made the comment that at that time "Missouri was an unknown new state and needed attractions".  He certainly has been an attraction for Hannibal for many years!  Pictured above is Cardiff Hill, the setting for many of his stories, including Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Sam Clemens returned to this town at least seven times after he left it, the last time was in 1902.   On those visits he usually visited Laura Hawkins, the girl known as Becky Thatcher in Mark Twain's books.  Laura Hawkins moved back to the town in 1875.  Her childhood home is pictured below.

That home is currently being restored so we could not tour it.  We were able to visit the homes of Sam Clemens, as well as that of his friend Tom Blankenship (aka Huckleberry Finn, a character in Mark Twain's book).  We could also step into the law office of John Clemens, the father of Samuel.

Growing up in Hannibal certainly provided Mark Twain with plenty to write about in his book.  In the above building he spent a night hiding out when he had played hookey from school.  It so happened that a corpse was lying on the floor of his Dad's office that same night.  A man had recently been stabbed and the town officials were temporarily holding him for the night in that building.  As a child Sam also saw a slave murdered by his white overseer, and another time a shooting took place right outside of his home. 
In Hannibal is located a Museum Interpretive Center where we learned many more interesting facts regarding Clemen's life as a boy in the town, as well as his life as a steamboat pilot, gold miner, and newspaper writer.

In the Mark Twain Museum Gallery are many wonderful displays pertaining to the books Twain wrote, as well as 15 original Norman Rockwell paintings of Tom and Huck.  After touring that museum I wandered to a back room where a man (Jim Waddell),  impersonating Mark Twain, was doing a monologue on Twain's recollections on his brief stint as a soldier during the Civil War.  We spent way more time than we had planned to in Hannibal, but it was certainly time well spent!

Missouri Botanical Garden-Part 2

As I had mentioned in my last posting, there are many different plants, shrubs and trees blooming presently in the garden, one of which is the fringe tree, a native of eastern United States. 

The park does have an azalea-rhododendron garden but we saw blooming azaleas in other sections of the garden, one of which is the Japanese Garden.  In the above picture is an azalea bush along with a couple of Japanese maple trees.   This part of the garden was dedicated in 1977.  It has waterfalls, beaches and plantings designed with a theme of "garden of pure clear harmony and peace".  Spring is certainly a wonderful time to walk through this area of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Something to look for when visiting the garden is Dale Chilhuly Glass sculptures, as well as other artwork, which can be seen in all areas of the park.  They certainly add to the beauty of the various gardens within the park.  The sculpture "Sole Provider" (artist Joe Mutasa) is located in the azalea garden.  It was a gift from the artists of Zimbabwe and Chapunga Sculpture Park "in memory of those who perished on Sept. 11, 2001". 
 I hope that the pictures in this posting, and the previous one, proves to you our readers the truth of my comment that I made when I noted that this is the best time of the year to visit the Missouri Botanical Garden!   Its beauty is quite awesome and I am glad I had my camera with me.

Springtime at Missouri Botanical Garden

This garden has been the subject of at least a couple of other postings which I have written in the past several years.  We visited the garden again yesterday and I must say that this is the best time of the year to view the garden.  Many different wonderful flowers are presently blooming- some are at the end of that time and others just at their peak of beauty.  I was surprised to see that there are amaryllis still in bloom.

The Linnean House was our first stop, where I took the above picture.  The building was built in 1882 and is the oldest continuously operated public greenhouse west of the Mississippi.  The building was originally designed as an orangery to over winter citrus trees and other plant specimens.   As an aside here, and for those of you not familiar with the garden, it was built in 1859 by Henry Shaw a 19th century businessman who lived in St.Louis most of his life.  Not only is the garden's greenhouse  the oldest in the nation, but that can be said also for the Missouri Botanical Garden- that it is the oldest in continuous operation.

I think that the biggest attraction right now in the garden is the Iris patch.  An interpretive sign in the vicinity noted that the "Fleur-de-lis" is a term and symbol associated with a hybrid German iris.  According to legend the flower helped save the French army in the sixth century from a hostile army that had cornered them in a bend of the Rhine River.  The French king spotted a potential ford in the river by the presence of an iris in the water.  He deduced that it indicated a shallow area where it was possible for his army to cross and escape from the enemy.  The grateful king then choose the flower as a symbol for the royal family of France.

A wonderful floral smell was in the air as we approached the flowering bush pictured above.  I mistakenly identified it as a lilac bush.  It is instead a beauty bush from China, a member of the honeysuckle family.

Some of the charm of this garden can be found in its buildings which Henry Shaw constructed.  Pictured above is the neoclassic structure which is one of only five of  the original buildings left on the grounds.  It was constructed between 1859 and 1860.  The building serves as a natural history museum, a library, as well as a herbarium.  A sign in front of the building states that it (the building) "was a visible reminder to all visitors that this Garden is not just a pretty park, but also a scientific institution".
I just could not cover everything we saw in the Garden in one posting- so I will continue this later.

Burden Falls Wilderness

In our travels covering Southern Illinois I have often written of places we have seen within the Shawnee National Forest.  More than 280,000 acres of that forest lie in rough unglaciated areas of southern Illinois known as the Ozark and Shawnee hills.  John and I decided that there was still a lot of the Shawnee Forest we needed to see yet, which prompted us to take another road trip over the roads of southern Illinois yesterday.   And again we found the scenery quite spectacular with rolling hills, meadows and forests dotted with blooming dogwood and red bud trees.  Flowering azaleas, iris, and wisteria are also contributing now to the springtime beauty.  At Bell Smith Springs we saw a fairly large patch of wild flowers.

Shawnee National Forest has seven wilderness areas designated by Congress in 1990.  Yesterday we were in the Burden Falls Wilderness- Bell Smith Springs is located within that area.  We could not do any hiking whatsoever around the springs because of high water which even covered the foot paths.  At Burden Falls, however, we could do a some walking around the falls, but the paths were quite muddy.

Burden Falls is an impressive series of falls with a total drop of 100 feet.  Our last stop of the
day was at Millstone Bluff Trail.  John is pictured below standing in front of the bluff with his grandson Nathan.  The baby has been a good traveler this past week, as long as we keep the car moving!

The bluff use to be the site of an old quarry from which early settlers retrieved sandstone to make millstones.  However, the more important story at the top of the bluff is the presence of a settlement of prehistoric Native Americans 1,500 years ago.   Archeologists have found here what remains of a stone wall, community cemetery, rock carvings and village dwellings.  We hiked up the bluff to view those sites.  Pictured below are the rock formations on which we could barely discern the petroglyphs.  Wind and rain have eroded much of the carvings of the Mississippian people who once lived here.  Looters have removed many of their artifacts.

Marion, Illinois

In my last posting I stated that I would not write anymore on Southern Illinois.  However, we have done more touring of the area in the past couple of days, so I have found additional items which I want to pass on to you our readers.  Marion is the town where our rig is parked .  Our first trip into Marion brought us to the town square, which is dominated by a clock tower.

Williamson County Courthouse once stood where the tower is located, and the square use to be called the Courthouse Square.  The courthouse went into disrepair and was demolished.  The tower was designed as  a memorial to the courthouse, and the square is now dubbed the the Tower Square Plaza.  As we walked around the square we noticed a statue of the current mayor, Robert Butler.  He has been in office since 1963 and is the longest serving mayor in Illinois.  The success of this small town can be seen in some of the newer buildings which surround the square, one of which is the Marion Cultural and Civic center.  It is a state-of-the art facility built in 2004. The charm of this town is in the fact that it also has preserved some of its older buildings, some of which we saw in a driving tour of the older section of town.

Yesterday we returned to downtown Marion where the Williamson County Historical Society Museum is located.  The large brick building in which the museum is housed was constructed in 1913.  It use to serve as the county jail until 1972.  The jail also served as the sheriff's residence, sixteen sheriffs and

their families lived here.  The front portion in which they lived was considered to be an elegant home of the late nineteenth century.  Pictured below is the living room which features a crimson loveseat circa 1850 and a red satin lamp in the "Gone With the Wind" style.

We had a tour guide for the house and jail.  He had a lot of interesting history to share with us regarding some of the jail's famous inmates.  They were:  members of the Charlie Birger gang, the Klu Klux Klan, and defendants awaiting trial for the Herrin Massacre.  The latter had to do with a coal miner's union dispute.

As you can see in the above picture, the museum has kept some of the original cell blocks.  The building is quite large and contains more than twenty rooms focusing on Southern Illinois history.

We returned home that evening to see a bird fly out from under the hood of our motor home.  Upon further inspection of our engine compartment we found the above nest with eggs in it.  Unfortunately we had to remove it, there is no way the eggs will hatch and the little ones leave the nest before we leave in several days!  That is a first for us.

Further tours of Southern Illinois

We have been quite fortunate that the strong storms of the pass few days have passed us by.  We have had heavy rains with creeks overflowing and some roads flooded.  That all is minor, however, compared to the devastated areas in Arkansas and Mississippi.  So, despite overcast skies and a cool breeze, we decided to do a road trip yesterday, with our daughter Melissa and son Nathan joining us.   Our first stop was Makanda, Illinois which is located near Giant City Park. 

The town is an artist's colony of sorts.  Pictured above is one of the buildings in a single strip mall.  We strolled along the boardwalk and entered some of the stores which offered for sale some of the work of local artists as well as New Age merchandise and antiques.  In the back of the mall we found the town's Secret Garden which features rainmaker art (copper sculptures) by Dave Dardis.

 

It is probably not a good time of the year to view the garden, it seemed to be a bit over-grown with many vines and bushes.  In its own way it is still a quaint and interesting garden with a creek running through it.  We drove from Makanda to Cobden looking for any restaurant where we could get lunch.  It is not tourist season yet for Cobden or any other small town in the region, so we had no luck on that score until Melissa remembered a winery she had visited last year.  We came to realize that we were on the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail, and at Von Jacob Vineyard/ Brewery we had some very good German sausage sandwiches.  After our lunch the sun came out and we felt that we might as well extend our touring further and check out the Pomona Natural Bridge in the Shawnee National Forest.  It is pictured below.

What a beautiful quiet place this is, tucked away amid a forest of pine trees.  We walked across the bridge and down into a canyon where we looked up at tall rocky bluffs.  On the ground a patch of may apples caught my eye and, checking under the leaves of the plant, I discovered that the plant is now in bloom.

I do not think we will do any more touring of Southern Illinois, as least for the present time.  There is certainly lots more to see and explore, but by the end of this week we should moving up to St. Louis.

Rim Rock National Recreational Trail

The last stop on our trip through Southern Illinois was in the Shawnee National Forest where the Rim Rock Trail is located.   That trail  is located on a natural escarpment or bluff and from that height we could see mush of the surrounding countryside as well as the valley spread out below us.  Halfway around the rim we came to a series of steps which took us down into a narrow rock passageway.

In this passageway we found ourselves surrounded by massive cliffs and huge boulders.

Fortunately, as I was about to snap the picture, two young children stepped into the passageway.  They were agreeable to be in the picture, which helped to give the picture some perspective.  We continued down more rock stairs until we reached the valley below.  There we found Ox-Lot Cave, a large rock bluff used in the 1890s by eastern logging enterprises to shelter livestock.  A fence was built in front of the cave, which created a corral.   In the back of the shelter is a spring that provided a watering hole for the animals.  Pictured below is the front of Ox-Lot Cave.  The immediate area around it is called Pounds Hollow, an old English term meaning "some sort of enclosure".

A cool running stream runs through the canyon and into Pounds Lake which is about 1/2 mile away.  Part of the enjoyment of our time on the Rim Trail were sightings of such wildflowers as violets, buttercups, and shooting stars (which are pictured below).  Unfortunately, because of the long winter, the wildflowers are just starting to come out.  In another week or so the trail should have an abundance them in bloom.

Cave-In-Rock State Park

It was great to be able to spend Easter with our daughter Melissa and grandson Nathan in St.Louis at the home of my sister Julia and her husband Cal.  Spencer needed to stay back in Carbondale to study, law school is keeping him quite busy.  Unfortunately Nathan was not a happy baby over the Easter week-end, because he was still recovering from his first round of vaccinations.  Not even the quacks from his little duck could get him to smile.  He is now two months old.

John and I chose to explore southern Illinois a bit more yesterday.  The drive was beautiful as the surrounding countryside had many blooming red bud and dogwood trees.  Adding to those colors were the various shades of green on the new leaves which are now coming out on many of the other trees.  Spring just seemed to pop out overnight.  The warmer temperatures are also very welcomed.

We drove first to Cave-In-Rock State Park, which sits on high bluffs overlooking the Ohio River.  Here we were about 15 miles from the Kentucky state line.  The town, Cave-In-Rock, which we drove through before arriving at the park, had a large banner announcing the presence of the cave in the park.  It claimed that the cave was "discovered by a Frenchman in 1729 and used as a hideout for river pirates, robbers, killers, a gang of counterfeiters, shelter for pioneers headed west".  I guess the idea of the banner was to arouse the curiosity of  tourists who happened to be driving through the town. The cave served as a back-drop for a scene in the movie "How The West Was Won".

 

It is an impressively large cave, however the floor of it is quite muddy and it was difficult for us to dodge the water dripping down from the ceiling.  It did not seem to be a very comfortable shelter!  Maybe it is only that wet during the spring season.  John and I also found the shores of the river outside the cave also quite wet, being more of a clay consistency rather than sand.  We did not spend much more time in this park, as we wanted to travel on further to Rim Rock National Trail, our next destination.

 

Tunnel Hill State Trail

We are extending our time here in Illinois for another couple of weeks, as we are continuing to enjoy visiting with our daughter Melissa, husband Spencer and grandson Nathan.  Ordinarily the days of cool damp weather would bother us and we would move on.  However, it does not seem easy to leave little Nathan!

Saturday was a warm day, albeit very breezy.  We decided that it was about time to get out on our bikes once again and try a section of the Tunnel Hill Trail.  The trail, once a railroad line, was developed by the state of Illinois for hikers, bikers and joggers in 1998.  Pictured above is the tunnel for which the trail is named.  From 1870, and for the next 100 years, trains traversed through this tunnel and across southern Illinois carrying products from the fertile farmland of the area, as well as coal and timber to distant markets.  It was Ambrose Burnside, a Civil War General, who at first encouraged the building of the railroad to transport coal.  As a side note here, the way the General wore his whiskers gave us the word burnside, or sideburns.

There are 23 trestles along sections of the Tunnel Hill Trail.  Pictured above is the Breeden Trestle. the longest and the highest of all of them ( 90 feet high and 450 feet long).  It is a little over 2 feet south from from Tunnel Hill.   Our goal was to bike through the tunnel and go a bit beyond to the first trestle.  Going through the tunnel was a bit disconcerting because on a small portion of it we were in absolute darkness.  It was such a strange feeling to bike over a surface which I could not see.  Fortunately, about the time I was ready to panic, a glimmer of light came through from the opening at the end of the tunnel. 

I can well imagine that you are not impressed by the gray, wintery appearance of the trail.  However, the lack of foliage on the oak, hickory, cottonwood and sweet gum trees brought the river valleys and rocky bluffs into better view.  At this time of the year there are a few trees with white flowers on them, also some red bud trees in bloom.  We also were thrilled by a large patch of violets blooming along the trail.  Spring has to be coming soon!

Metropolis, Illinois

Our grandson Nathaniel's baptism was quite the momentous occasion yesterday with guests coming from as far away as California and Israel to attend the ceremony.  He is quite blessed to have begun his faith journey surrounded by a very large loving family!  Nathan slept through the ritual but had little patience with the picture taking-by that time he was quite hungry.
At this point I apologize for this posting making a turn from the sublime to the nonsensical.  Most of the guests had left after lunch and it was time for Melissa and the baby to nap, so our son Mike and I decided to ride over to Metropolis, Illinois.  In that small town a Superman Museum was started by in 1993 by Jim Hambrick who had started amassing Superman memorabilia since the age of six.

I am going to make the assumption that all of you our readers know of the mythological comic book American hero Superman.  He stood for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way", and those words are inscribed  under his statue which is pictured above.  It is easy to find him in Metropolis, because as soon as we entered the town there were signs directing us to the site.  Within a short distance of the statue is the museum which displays many artifacts relative to the development of the character over the years.

The museum is pictured above, and Mike felt the urge to complete the scene by dashing our of the phone booth.  Superman used the phone booth a lot when he had to change from his role as a  newspaper journalist to that of a man of steel.  From 1978 to 2013 seven movies were made of  the superhero, as well as a television series which ran from 1953-1957.

A section of the museum, pictured above, has the intercom system, telephone, typewriter, desk and hat rack used in the television series.  Many of the items were also used in the "Dragnet" television series because both shows used the same Hollywood prop house.   And of course, Superman's girl friend Lois Lane cannot be forgotten.  Metropolis raised the funds to erect a statue of Noel Neill, the actress who played the role of Lois Lane in the television series.  She is the First Lady of Metropolis.

Giant City State Park

John and I certainly have not been in our usual mode of traveling and sightseeing.  Have no fear, that will eventually pick up again.   However, writing on this blog will be sporadic for awhile during the time we are in the Midwest.  For now we are enjoying our grandson Nathan.  Every day brings changes in his development, it is like watching a flower slowly open up.
My sister Linda and her granddaughter Ellie came from Georgia to visit us this week.  Ellie has been so enamored with Nathan.  She is pictured below holding the baby.  Ellie was so happy to finally get him asleep that she flung out her arms with happiness- she could finally relax them!

We took Ellie and her Grandmother to Giant City Park to do some hiking on Tuesday.  The park is known for its very large sandstone formations made up of arrangements which resemble city blocks.

It was the Illinoisan Glacier back some 1,000,000 years ago which brought about the large sandstone formations.  Large blocks slid downward from a hill due to undercutting of a glacial stream (which is now known the Giant City Stream).  Differential weathering made possible the formation of the Devil's Standtable.

Karen Binder, author of Giant City State Park, comments that the park has some of the "best traveled streets in the Midwest".  Naturalists have studied the flora, residents of nearby towns have picnicked on its bluffs, and Civil War renegades have hidden in its caves.  Some of those visitors etched their names on the sandstone walls.

Our day in the park ended with a brief shower and a beautiful rainbow, one of the largest I have ever seen.  From newborn infants, to nodding heads of daffodils to colorful rainbows which fill the sky, certainly there are signs which portent of a wonderful spring season ahead of us!  God is good.