Hannibal

Leaving Nauvoo, we drove south, eventually crossing into Missouri.

We ate dinner and wandered around Hannibal a bit.

Saturday morning, we set out to discover Mark Twain's hometown.

Sarah helps paint the fence while Matthew, Megan and U watch.

Matthew and Megan in Huck Finn's boyhood home.

Me in Mark Twain's boyhood home. It was fun reading about his life. We learned about the people behind the stories and the real stories behind some of the stories. Mark Twain was quite the character!

Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher.

Matthew and Sarah.

Matthew and Megan.

U and Me.

We took a river cruise aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat. From Hannibal, Nauvoo is 66 miles and 18 hours upstream while St Louis is 120 miles and 24 hours downstream.

Sarah, Megan and Matthew up top where we sat. Notice the variety of pipes and horns on top of the boat.  They blew them all at once.  It was very loud!

The Mark Twain Lighthouse atop the Cardiff Hill.

Sarah, Me and Matthew on the boat.

U and Megan.

Lover's Leap.

Beautiful bald eagle.

What lovely decor.

The riverboat.

There was a park nearby where the kids enjoyed playing.

This was a really cool swing. It would work well for a caretaker to swing with a young child. Our kids loved using it as well.

Matthew and Sarah.

Megan and Matthew.

Megan, Matthew and Sarah. I love the look of pure delight on Megan's face.

Downtown Hannibal. Megan really liked the colorful building (which sold homemade ice cream) and wanted us to take a picture.

Mark Twain liked India.

Some of why he liked India so much. And I must agree that there is only one India. Of course, the picture is of the one building in India.

Cute fire hydrant!

Becky and Tom.

Megan and Matthew.

We toured the Mark Twain Cave. It is an interesting cave with a whole bunch of passageways that criss cross each other. It would be very easy to lose your way.  It is mostly dry with just rock. There are a few areas that have stalagmites and stalactites.

Sarah, Me, Matthew and Megan.

One of the many passageways.

Running our hand along the alligator's back.

Another part of the cave. Lots of people have engraved their names in the rock, including bandit Jesse James. What is interesting is that while they are preserving the names that are already there, it is now considered a crime to add your own name (the value of old graffiti versus new graffiti).

Sarah, Megan and Matthew sitting on a stone ledge above mom and dad.

The Devil's Backbone.

Beautiful area lit up with lots of LED lights.

One of the natural entrances to the cave.

View from Lover's Leap.

What beautiful flowers and butterflies!

Matthew and Megan.

We visited the Mark Twain Museum which had interactive scenes from many of his books as well as some historical items. Many of the original Norman Rockwell drawings for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were there as well.

Matthew sounding the riverboat horn. It was loud!

Megan sounding the horn while Matthew and Sarah steer.

Mark Twain himself visited and told us about the real life inspiration for many of his stories.

Statue of Tom and Huck at the bottom of Cardiff Hill.

With the lighthouse at the top of the hill. There were 244 steps.

U, Matthew and Megan with the lighthouse. When Matthew saw the lighthouse, he knew it must be the Ocracoke Lighthouse (in Outer Banks) because that lighthouse is all white too.

We finally found a North Dakota plate! This was the last license plate we needed to finish the license plate game. (For reference, we found the third to last plate--Rhode Island--2.5 weeks before at Mount Vernon. The second to last plate--Montana--was found in Nauvoo just a few days before.)

At the "Renowned Liars Table." It's amazing how our reputation preceded us! We had a yummy dinner and enjoyed some malts and shakes as a special treat after dinner.

International Animals

We met many interesting people and saw many interesting places while we were on our trip.  We also saw many animals; some were similar to what we see at home but others were very different.  Here are some of the creatures that caught our eyes:

Dogs
In India, there were stray dogs everywhere.  Grandma and Grandpa A said they weren't aggressive, they just hung out and scavenged where they could.

Dogs hanging out

These dogs found a place to hang out and be out of the rain.  The roof of a museum!

Camels
Not all animals lived a life of leisure though.  Especially around Jaipur we saw a lot of hard working camels.  They were pulling carts and doing a lot of heavy labor.

Taking a rest until he is needed again.  See his cart in the background?

Elephants
Of course one of the highlights of the trip was our elephant ride.  Our elephants were named Gori and Rohini.  We saw a few more elephants and all were being used for tourist rides.

Matthew was nervous and wanted a saddle on his elephant but he quickly moved to riding on the head.

or standing on it!

After the ride, we got to feed the elephants bananas.  They loved them!

Megan loved seeing her favorite animal up close.  I'm glad they liked hugs.

Grandma and Grandpa Allen getting in the pictures too.

Insects
Bugs are bugs right?  Maybe.  We saw some beautiful ones on our trip.

This black dragonfly was in India (Amber Fort).

The beautiful red one is from Japan.

These colorful spiders were all over the forest around a shrine in Japan.

A Japanese butterfly.

An Imperial praying mantis (found in the Imperial Gardens)

Monkeys
Monkeys are just a normal animal in India; however we stopped to watch them whenever we could. Very different that what we see around our home.

These were called Red Faced Monkeys.  We all thought they had more prominent red features.

Rodents
As we went around town we did see some rats in India, however they weren't too common where we were.  The parks however were filled with chipmunks.  You could tell they had been fed as they were fairly brave.  It was fun to watch them play.

This poor baby rat was on a sidewalk and hurt.  The birds took care of him shortly afterwards.

 One of the many chipmunks we saw in India.

"Look at this perfectly good coconut someone threw away!"

"I can live off this for weeks!"

Bats
Empty stone buildings have a strong resemblance to empty stone caves, at least in the minds of bats.  We saw them or smelled them at many of the locations in India.

Need bat pictures!

Birds
There were lots of interesting birds that we saw, especially in India because of the tropical climate.

These birds had some beautiful songs.

There was a big open courtyard full of pigeons where people were scattering seeds.  I snapped the picture right as something startled them.

A pair of swans were nice enough to pose in the moat outside the Imperial Palace.

Lizards
We saw quite a few lizards in India.  Apparently the only one notable enough to get a picture was in Japan though.

Goats
Goats were very common in India.  We saw goats in autos, goats in trucks, goats wandering free and goats tethered in the median.  Sometimes they looked more like pets than livestock.

Hanging out on a wall at Amber Fort.

Cows
Yes, in India there really are holy cows.  It was interesting to see these animals just walking down the street.  Many of them eat trash to sustain themselves.  Once we saw a cow laying down in the middle of a busy road.  Everyone just went around it.  Very interesting to see.

This was a line of several cows that came walking out of a gate right in front of us and then started walking down the street.

I think this cow wanted to take a ride with us to look for something better to eat.