Summer Vacation

 Hannibal, MO

(The Mark Twain Cave)

This was our only destination where we completely played the part of tourist.

There were no friends, family, or church events to draw us to this town.

It was the literary and social history that made me choose Hannibal.

 

We rolled into town in the midst of a hot and humid afternoon

 so we decided that the coolest place to be was in a cave.

The Mark Twain Cave, to be exact, where

Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher were lost in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Twain actually wrote about this cave in five of his books.

 

 

I was eager to visit a Missouri cave and see how it compared to

a California cave.

 

The first cave tour was in 1886.

We were thankful we did not have to begin our tour at the Discovery Entrance

but could enter through a regular doorway.

 

The 55 minute tour took us through many winding, narrow, limestone

 passages  with no great loss or gain in elevation.

In CA caves we often descend to great depths and then have to climb back out.

The Mark Twain cave is 6.5 miles long, has four entrances and 260 passages.

It is easy to see how someone could be lost in there forever.

Many CA caves have large chambers which showcase stalactites

and stalagmites but this was not the case in the Mark Twain Cave.



 

 

The cave is 52 degrees year round.

Before the tour, some people put on sweaters or light jackets.

I was just eager to get into the cave so I could feel the cool air.

 

 

 

 

 Before this became a national historical site, it was a common practice for
visitors to leave their names and the date on the walls.
The tunnels were full of names and dates from many years ago.

 

Besides being made famous by Mark Twain, this cave had some infamous characters

live, work, and hide in it's many passages.

We peered into Jesse James' hideout (where he signed and dated the walls)

 and down the passages into the

science lab where Dr. Joseph Nash experimented on human corpses.

The Confederates also used the cave to stockpile weapons.

In more recent years the cave was used to store large amounts of food

 in case of a Cold War attack.

 

 

Leaving the cave area, we drove up the steep road to Lover's Leap

which gave us a wonderful view of Hannibal and the Mississippi River.

The only problem was that it had begun to rain and thunder rumbled ominously

through the dark clouds.  I  quickly decided that being on the highest point of the area

and near a chain link fence was not the best place to be during a thunder storm.