Where in the USA RV?: Leaving Wisconsin

Bob and I enjoyed our visit o Wisconsin. We both agree that it is the cleanest, neatest state we visited this trip. Every yard was neat and tidy, no trash or old stuff laying around. It also gets the distinction of two trophies from us.....drumroll, please! Both are roadkill trophies. Oklahoma has the trophy for "Most Skunks." Wisconsin gets the trophies for "Most Deer" and "Most Raccoon" dead on the roads. I don't think I have ever seen that many raccoon as road kill---opossums and armadillos, maybe, but not raccoon!

From Wisconsin we drove south into Iowa and then Illinois. We stopped for the night in Macomb, Illinois. There were no campgrounds in the area so we stopped at the local Wal-Mart. We were able to get a couple of geocaches near the Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, we did not notice that Wal-Mart was in close proximity to a train track. You guessed it....the trains went by all night long.

The next morning we headed to Hannibal, Missouri. We stopped at for gas at the Hannibal Wal-Mart. We unhooked the car in the parking lot and went in search of a Corps of Engineer Campground. The campgrounds in Hannibal had terrible reviews and we wanted to be out of town. We found John Hay Public Use Area across the Mississippi in East Hannibal, Illinois. There was one other camper parked there and it looked like a good spot for us.

From our site we could see the stern wheeler Mark Twain docked at Hannibal.

After getting set up, we drove back to Hannibal to look around. We spotted our RV from the landing in Hannibal.

Once we got our bearings and saw what sights there were to choose from in Hannibal, we returned to the RV to plan our adventure for the following day. I was looking forward to a good night's sleep with no trains! Well, that wasn't to be. There was a train track that ran along the riverfront in Hannibal, across the river from us and the trains ran regularly all night long! Yikes!

The next morning, we drove back to Hannibal to tour the Mark Twain Museum. We started off by geocaching at the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn Statue.

We crossed what used to be the on ramp to the original Mark Twain Memorial Bridge which was built in 1935. Now it is an overlook of the Mississippi River. When the bridge was first built, it had a recurring problem in the summer---mayflies were attracted to the lights. The mayflies would be 2 inches thick on the span creating hazardous driving conditions. A snowplow was used to clear the mayflies from the bridge. The original bridge was demolished in 2001. The new bridge spans the Mississippi River just a few hundred yards north of this site.

Then we climbed the stairs to the memorial lighthouse. The first lighthouse was dedicated in 1935, but it was destroyed by high winds in 1960. This is the new lighthouse. The steps you see are just a small portion of the 246 you have to climb to get to the lighthouse.

Here, Bob is on his way down another section of the steps.

From the lighthouse, we toured Mark Twain Museum. It included his boyhood home, complete with the fence Tom Sawyer had to whitewash in the book.

We also visited 'Huck Finn's' house and 'Becky Thatcher's' house. The characters were based on people Mark Twain grew up with in Hannibal. After a visit to the Mark Twain Museum, we decided to have lunch at the Mark Twain Brewery and Pub, of course!

We had a delicious lunch and specialty brews at the pub, then we headed out of town to take a look at Mark Twain Cave and Lover's Leap. The cave didn't appeal to us, so we didn't take the tour. We did go to Lover's Leap and find a geocache. The leap is fenced off so no one else can take a leap.