Hannibal, Missouri

Most of the temple missionary couples enjoyed a nice outing to Hannibal. We carpooled for the ~1 hour drive. The group started at the Mark Twain Cave and ended with a riverboat ride. The cave would have been a wonderful place for kids to explore and grow up with, but it would have been a parent's nightmare because it was so big. At one point they had a designated spot that when you entered you wrote your name down and removed it when you left. At the end of the day, a search party would look for children who were unaccounted for. Back then they only had candles for light.

In front of the cave entrance


Thousands--yes thousands--of people who went into the cave wrote their names on the walls, either scratching it in or using soot from candle smoke.

After the cave we went our own way for shopping, lunch (we enjoyed Fiddlesticks with our carpool buddies), and window shopping our way around town. We went into a wonderful quilt shop, but they requested no pictures. 

Sights along Main Street in Hannibal

Hannibal has been kept up through the years and looks very nice, less run down or dated than some of the other small towns in the area.

Before boarding the steamboat


Mark Twain Lighthouse on Cardiff Hill, only visible from the river

Lover's Leap, but you couldn't land in the river--it's too far away, even when the river floods

Somebody got in trouble, bigtime. A barge high centered part of their load on a sandbar. For four days two tugs had been working to get it off, and the day we were they added a third one. Behind them is the island Mark Twain used in his books.

When they first talked about carpooling to Hannibal, Dave offered to drive and invited anyone who wanted to go to Sam's Club afterward to join us--the nearest one is in Quincy, which was kind of on the way. Only one person responded, but we saw several from the group there when we went, so lots of people liked the idea. Yes, even when it's just two old people, we like to shop at Sam's for some things.

Updates: 

Eaglets: Now that they're getting bigger, we've discovered there are three eaglets, not just two.

Spiders: Someone said our apartment hadn't been used for almost a year before we moved in. No wonder there were so many spiders. Fortunately, they've accepted we're here and we rarely see them anymore.

Arline's voice: She still doesn't have her voice back. Sometimes there's a bit of a growl to her words, but that's when she's talking as loudly as she can and it's like yelling, so it makes her throat hurt. She's got an appointment with a PT in a couple of weeks. However, it's not all bad. Almost three months without a voice has brought a lot of lessons that wouldn't have come any other way. And people have complimented her in the temple, saying what a nice temple voice she has.

Look for next week's blog post on Tuesday afternoon. We've been posting on Mondays, but next week it won't be up until Tuesday.

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