***

From Bob:

Many people are asking us: “What is the worst state you’ve visited on this trip?”  Until today we might have said Kansas, although that wasn’t that bad, or maybe mentioned our Great Salt Lake misadventure, though even that should not tarnish the whole state of Utah.

                Now, we have a clear winner, and we had to wait until our last new state to find it.  Connecticut stinks.

Having spent the first 23 years of my life there, I maybe should have known this.  The 90s-era tourism posters that said, “Connecticut: It’s between Boston and New York,” may have given me some idea there really wasn’t much going on in my native state to crow about.  In retrospect, is seems clear.

But I used to like Connecticut, and our drive through there today was filled with more than a tinge of nostalgia.  The corridor between NYC and New Haven is pretty well known to me, and once you get near Bridgeport, you’re right up near my points of origin.   It was a great place to grow up, largely because we took back roads everywhere.

Now I know that if you drive the highways in Connecticut, particularly after dark, you’re asking for congestion.  The already smooth and comfortable roads need belt sanding or something.  On 95 and 91 they’ve cut three lanes down to one in multiple places, and the population density of the lower half of the state can’t take it, even at 9 pm. 

That wouldn’t be that bad of the Nutmeg Staters were not in some competition with Massachusetts and New York drivers for the mantle of rudest in the US.  The captain of the Connecticut team drives a brown CRV and staunchly refused to let me merge at construction near the North Haven Costco.  There was no reason for her not to let me in.  Jen leaned out the window, arms spread wide in a “what’s your problem?” gesture but she squeezed on by.  What we should have done was taken her picture and posted it on the blog where this person could live in ignominy.  The best I can do it relay Nadia’s comment, “I can’t believe she was so rude; she was an old lady.”  Take that, CRV woman.

This is all included not because I needed a rant – I’ve calmed down in the soothing environment of Grandma’s house (Grandma is never rude) – but because many readers of this blog are from Connecticut.   We’ve been all across this great country and the Costco conflict was the only such effrontery we experienced. Just this one lady in five weeks of driving.  I want all our Connecticut readers to know that there are other places you can go to get away from this lady and her ilk – an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, for instance.

 Throughout all the many caves we’ve visited on this trip, Zoe has been desperate to get more of a genuine caving experience.  She’s always disappointed when either she’s not old enough, or her sisters aren’t old enough, to do the tours she really wants to do.  (It was a crushing disappointment to her that the Mammoth Cave Trog tour, which was for 7-12 year olds only and involved wearing overalls and headlamps and crawling through tunnels, was no longer running because the crazy Kentucky schools are back in session already.)  So this morning she and I went on the Violet City Lantern tour, a 3-hour, 3-mile strenuous trek through the cave by lantern light.

The rangers had all raved about this tour, and we weren’t disappointed.  In addition to the cool cave scenery, made especially romantic when lit only by old-fashioned gas lanterns, part of our route was along what’s called the Historic tour.  Now I’m as shallow and easily bored as the next person, and I have to admit the words “historic cave tour” hadn’t jumped out at me as bursting with excitement.  I thought it would be dry statistics about who discovered the cave and when and blah blah blah.  Instead, we saw the following, perfectly preserved due to the cave’s constant 54 degree temperature and 80% humidity: wooden pipes, made of poplar trees, that were used in a saltpeter mining operation run during the War of 1812, a ladder installed by Native Americans 2000-3000 years ago, various other Native American artifacts and drawings, 2500-year-old human poop, and stone huts – build right in the middle of the cave’s large passages, about a mile in – that were used to house tuberculosis patients in the hopes that the “healthy” cave air would provide a cure.  (In fact, it had the opposite effect – but the patients had agreed that they wouldn’t leave the cave until they were cured or dead.  Some of them spent 10 months in the cold, damp darkness of the cave – until there were sufficient fatalities that the medical authorities in charge decided to ban the experiment.  And in the meantime, tours were going through the cave, passing by the huts and peering at the patients.)  We saw the original rock paths used by tours in the 1800s, and walked on paths built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.  All in all, quite an experience and well worth the price of admission.

After this exciting morning, we got in the car and drove approximately 27 hours across Kentucky and Virginia.  Or at least it felt that way.  Someone needs to build an east/west highway here, stat.  It seems impossible to believe that the route we took was the most efficient one, so maybe google was just messing with us.

***

From Bob:

The driving portion of this day got off to a bad start and it didn’t end that well, either.  The best thing about today is that we got our laundry washed and dried (though not folded and sorted) and we got out of our campsite on time.  Also, Zoe got to do a special lantern-lit cave tour with Jen.  Nadia and Lanie are probably happy that they could afford Pop-Tarts from the camp store while we laundered.   We managed to get some postcards off, too, and the laundry room had a few spare outlets that I could charge things in.  So the morning was actually a pretty productive time.

                Then we went to leave and drove around for a half hour and things started looking familiar.  Hey, there’s a sign for Mammoth Caves.  Is this a different part of the park?  No, we just drove in a big circle.  Jen was making sandwiches in the passenger seat and I must’ve got wrapped up in the book on CD (thanks for nothing, Crossman-Ellis family and your engaging audio literature). 

                After that it was just a slog through Kentucky, which I’m sure is a fine state, but it was like driving through molasses.  Even the brief bit of Tennessee we got into (I would not have thought it was possible to be in a state for a shorter duration than we were in Idaho, but such was our experience in Tennessee) and the novelty of going through the Cumberland Gap did not save the afternoon.   This is because driving through western Virginia is rather like driving through Kentucky.

                Even the knowledge that there was a mattress waiting for me and not a Thermarest did not perk me up.  I was perked up a little by the pizza from Pizza Plus in Duffield, VA.  We’ve been pizza-starved this trip, so any that we get seems good.  We may have left our one true chance for great pizza behind in Chicago with Colleen, but that was so early in the trip that it wasn’t high on our agenda.  And Colleen took us to some really top-notch places to eat, too, so we have no complaints.  It won’t be too long before we can order a White Buffalo at La Festa again.

                Talking about pizza is not making my headache feel any better.  I would say I’m dehydrated, but I had seven glasses of water at Pizza Plus.  It’s rather a hybrid fast-food, waitress-service place and although we sat near the soda fountain, the waitress was pouring our waters from a pitcher she brought out from the back.  If I could have gotten to that soda fountain, I might have drunk more water.   I don’t feel thirsty now, I feel smoky.  On this, our last night in a campground (we’re in spacious, two-room KOA cabin), we seem to be downwind from all the other sites.

                Enough complaining.  Good night.

                One more complaint: Although they clearly call it Mammoth Caves, there was not a single mammoth to be seen.  This seems like false advertising.

Another substantial driving day today, but still felt pretty minor compared to yesterday.  We were a little slow getting moving, having not quite caught up with last night’s transition from Central to Eastern time.  We had stayed in a cabin (“kamping kabin” as they irritatingly call them, which almost made me not stay there) at another KOA, chosen for convenience, and actually found this one to be a step up from the others we’ve stayed at – convenient to the highway but not right on top of it, and very large and wooded.  There was also a pool with a water slide, and we were anticipating difficulties getting the kids to leave without trying it out (since it didn’t open until 11).  We needn’t have worried, however – the unseasonably cool weather continues and we were all still huddled in our sweatshirts when we eventually departed.  (Don’t get me wrong – that factor alone would not have been enough to keep the kids off the waterslide.)  The worst thing about this KOA is that their brochure promised free coffee in the office and when I eagerly went to take them up on it, found only a dry, empty coffee pot.

 

About three and a half hours of driving brought us to Shenandoah National Park.  We drove through on the famous Skyline Drive, atop a ridge in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and luckily found it not at all terrifying.  The air was wonderfully cool and fresh and piney smelling, and we opened all the windows and enjoyed the scenery.  We happened to arrive at the visitor center just in time for the kids to do a junior ranger program on nature journaling, and then set off on a hike the ranger had recommended called Stony Man (which actually covers a bit of the Appalachian Trail).  It was a fairly easy hike – a 1.6 mile loop leading to the summit of the second highest mountain the park – but Lanie is reaching the end of her rope with any kind of hiking, so threats and bribery were required to get her to the top.  (Our main threats on this trip consist of work detail (mainly dishwashing duty) and loss of dessert privileges, and bribery is usually food-related.)  The view was stunning and well worth it, and the trip back down was quick and easy.  Later we stopped at the road at an overlook to see where we’d hiked – the mountain is shaped like a reclining man gazing lazily up at the sky.

The afternoon nearing an end, we set off for an additional two and a half hour drive to DC (or actually, to our friend Kathleen’s house in Bethesda, MD).  On travel days we usually stop at a restaurant for dinner, which keeps the children from mutinying over the peanut butter lunches.  Today this was particularly necessary because we didn’t even really eat lunch – our car supplies are running low (just about out of peanut butter and beef jerky!),  and we didn’t want to take the time to stop, so lunch consisted of a can of honey-roasted peanuts and various other scraps from the snack box.  (The kids didn’t even complain about missing lunch – I think the monotony has successfully demoralized them to the extent that they didn’t even notice.)  So we were off to Applebees, which turned out to be a good choice because apparently kids eat for $.99 on Tuesdays.  (This was not quite as good of a deal as it could have been, since Zoe has now decided that her tastes are too sophisticated for the children’s menu.)

We successfully reached Bethesda just after 8pm, and it was wonderful to have a friendly house to arrive at rather than another campground or hotel room.  Of course, I think we managed to arrive at the worst possible time and completely sabotage the Keller/Volchok’s bedtime routine, but all the kids immediately started having a great time together and we did too.

***

Did you know that we’ve been to the first two tourist attraction in the US?  The first was Niagara Falls and the second was Mammoth Caves.  They both opened within a few years of one another in the early 1800s.

                Now that I’ve established myself as an authority on US travel, let’s see what else I can tell you.  Surely you knew that Colonel Sanders was born in Kentucky because of the chicken, but did you know that Lee Majors is also from Kentucky?  He is, and just a few towns over from where the Colonel’s birthplace is marked with a KFC Café.  I don’t have many regrets about this trip, but I’m thinking now it would have been nice to stop by there.  It smelled like free chicken as we were driving past.

                We’ve passed many so many notable things that I can’t recall them all.  I know we passed through the home town of Little Miss Tiny Kentucky 2011, but I can’t remember her name or which town it was. Surely someone will pipe in with this information within a few minutes after this blog is posted.

                Several signs have pointed out Civil War battles that took place right along the side of the road.  We have not suffered any anti-North bias because of our New Hampshire license plate, though.  Rather, things are starting to look like home.  The hills here look like our hills, though the valleys and fields here look a little more productive than the ones around here.  If they put a road atop some of the Presidentials, it would be very similar to Shenandoah National Park (not that I’m advocating this, by the way).  

Once we got in the DC metro area, the cars started looking like ours.  Minivans have replaced pickup trucks.  Zoe asked a few weeks ago if we lived in the only part of the country that had neighborhoods.  We’re giving the kids exposure to vast swaths of the US that you can see from the highway.  Well, here we are tonight in a very nice house is a very nice neighborhood in Bethesda.  It all seems very close to home.

We had a nice relaxing morning today, since we’d booked a cave tour that started at 10, and was only a short walk away.  (The best part of the Mammoth Cave campground is that it’s so close to the visitor center and all the tours, along with many hiking trails.  We’ve become accustomed to all the huge national parks where you might have to drive half an hour to get to where you want to go.  We love it when we arrive someplace where we can set off on foot and give the poor van a break.)

Mammoth Cave is thought to be the largest cave in the world, and much of it is still unexplored.  There are quite a variety of different tours here, ranging from short and easy to long and strenuous.  We chose a middle path, and went with a two-hour, moderate difficulty tour called the New Entrance tour.  (It was not actually all that strenuous, since most of the walking was down stairs, but since the stairs were very steep and spanning deep chasms below, it was definitely not for the acrophobic.)  This was probably my favorite cave of the trip – the cave scenery was impressive and the ranger was knowledgeable and fun. 

In the afternoon we dragged the kids (or at least 2/3 of them required dragging) on a hike down past the natural entrance of the cave.  In the other caves we’ve visited, there was never much of a natural entrance – sometimes a small hole in the rock that the guide would point out on your way through the revolving door that they’d drilled into the cave for tours.  This cave had a real entrance like you’d picture a cave should have – a great black opening in the hillside, with cold air rushing from it.  You could walk into the “vestibule” without a tour, and we even saw a bat hanging on the wall.  Further along the hike, we saw the place where the underground river that had formed the cave emerged and joined the Green River above ground.

We’d planned to do another hike into a sinkhole, but Lanie was just about at the end of her rope (her enthusiasm for hiking having been on the wane for several days), and Bob and I weren’t at our best either, since we both seem to be coming down with something.  So it was a quiet afternoon at the campground, which now – on Sunday afternoon – had become almost as much of a ghost town as Hannibal.  Tonight we had a campfire – probably our last, so we finally used up the rest of our s’more supplies.

***

This is considered one of the three crown jewels of America’s caves (along with Carlsbad Caverns and Jewell Cave) according to our guide Ranger Steve. This gave me a pang because, as you know, we passed on Jewell Cave when we were in South Dakota.  Ranger Steve said that Jewell Cave really pales in comparison to Mammoth and Carlsbad, and that he wishes he went to Wind Cave instead of Jewell when he was in South Dakota.  This made me feel better.

                Truthfully, although the caves are very interesting here, the most remarkable part of our tour was the stairway that leads you down hundreds of feet of vertical channels once you enter at what they call the “New Entrance.”  They wind among the rocks and give brief glimpses of the 100-foot drops stretch below.  Of course, by now we know that I eat 100-foot drops for breakfast with my granola bars, so I really enjoyed this part of the journey, though some of our co-spelunkers had trouble with it. 

                Ranger Steve said the man who created this entrance and exploited the caves in the 30s built wooden stairs down.  When it came under the NPS, they ripped out the wooden stairs and contracted out to have metal stairs built.  Nobody could figure out how to do it until one submarine contractor came along.  His company took six years, but they engineered what I think is a marvel.

                Another highlight of our cave tour: We got to see a bat and cave crickets.  Unfortunately, the tour where you get to see the eyeless cave fish was sold out.  All-in-all, though, I am happy with our cave adventures on this trip.   It’s always nice and comfortable down there, just remember to bring your sweatshirt.

                We’re down to just one night in the tent left.  Then it’s bed, beds, beds all the way home.  

After another hearty breakfast, we sadly said goodbye to the Drury Inn and headed over to the St. Louis Zoo.  Unfortunately we couldn’t walk there.  After a lovely day with no driving at all, we paid the price by getting caught in various construction detours and, later, zoo traffic, but with the help of our GPS we eventually arrived in Forest Park, home of the zoo.

It was another beautiful day – sunny and low 80s – and the zoo was a great way to spend our morning.  Since it was Saturday, it was pretty crowded, and I was almost wishing for a little of the ghost-town feel that we’d had in Hannibal.

We wanted to get on the road by around 1:00, so we hit upon the brilliant scheme of withholding lunch until we left the zoo.  That eventually got the kids out of there without a battle (possibly because they were weak from hunger).  Then it was our usual lunch buffet in the car: peanut butter and bread, peanut butter and tortilla, peanut butter and banana, or peanut butter and apple.  (Also, we have sun nut butter.)

We had around a 5 ½ hour drive to Kentucky, so we decided to stop for dinner.  (The vision of a restaurant is one thing that really keeps the kids going these days.)  However, it never seems to fail that when dinnertime arrives, we’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing to be seen but farms and trees.  In this case, we eventually happened upon a Dairy Queen – not Bob’s and my first choice, but one that was met with much enthusiasm from the back seat.  Did you know the kids’ meals there come with a whole soft serve ice cream cone?  We are thinking of our friend Jamie, who practically had Dairy Queen cater his wedding.

We got to Mammoth Cave National Park with some daylight still left.  Although the cave is of course the main attraction here, there are also miles of unspoiled countryside, and we saw several deer and turkeys.  In stark contrast to Hannibal, the Mammoth Cave campground was hopping.  It was a Saturday night, and people were living it up.  Still, we had a nice large site among the trees, and speedily set up our tent for the last time. 

***

From Bob:

We have not crossed so many states in one day since we entered Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah again.  This time is it was Illinois and Indiana (both of which we passed through on the northern run), sandwiched between Missouri and Kentucky.

                We definitely did cross the Ohio River this time, a few hours after the Mississippi.  Aside from that it was an uneventful drive, save for the mess getting out of Forest Park in St. Louis.  It was a beautiful summer day – mild for August – and everyone seemed to want to go to the zoo.

                We have been very fortunate weather-wise.  It is not oppressive at all.  The mid- to high 80s feel fine when humidity is low.  We have been sparing on the A/C in the car and not suffering too much for that. 

             We have not calculated our gas efficiency yet, but we’ll have to factor in an interesting (maybe) car-related note that some people may have realized: The gas has changed as we move back east.  Somewhere along the line out west the regular gasoline became to 85 octane, though the prices were similar all along the way.  I thought this was strange, but figured maybe I was imagining things; but, behold, we get back close to the Mississippi and the octane for regular gas goes back up to 87, where I always thought it had been.  What happened to those two octane?  Did they get lost in the high altitude?  Why was I paying just as much for 85 as I am now for 87?  Can I get a refund?

Today, right after breakfast, we set off on a 15-minute walk to the long-awaited City Museum.  This place really defies description, and I have to assume is unique in all the world.  It is not, as you might think by the name, some dry historical, educational kind of place.  Instead, it is a kid’s (or kid-at-heart’s) dream come true.  It is not, however, a place for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.  Or claustrophobic.  Or inflexible.

This place used to be a shoe factory.  It’s since been taken over (presumably by some kind of brilliant and crazy mad-scientist-type) and turned into the most eclectic “museum” you’ve ever seen.  Almost everything is constructed from found and salvaged materials.  There are no maps.

On the 11^th floor roof, you’ll find a school bus hanging off the corner (you can sit in the driver’s seat, actually off the edge of the building).  You can ride a Ferris wheel, which evidently has been

 considerably souped up, since it goes about five times faster than any Ferris wheel I’ve ever been on, and gives you the distinct impression that you’re going to soar off the edge of the roof as you come down.  You can climb a 3-story cage tunnel up into the sky, then take a deep breath and plunge down the steep, fast slide underneath the tunnel.  You can climb and slide and swing and hop in various structures everywhere you look.

When you’re tired of the roof, you can go inside and take a 10-story spiral slide down to the bottom level.  The slide is inspired by the old spiral slide that shoes traveled down in the factory, and looks similar.  It’s inside this eerily lit industrial courtyard, and involves plunges into darkness and strange flickering lights.

The slide will let you out into the cave.  This is a multi-level, dimly lit area full of tunnels, wire ladders, slides, and rock carvings.  A huge pipe organ resides above, playing creepy music.  Some of the tunnels are so small you have to crawl to get out, and your parental commitment will be tested when you have to follow your four-year-old into a dark hole, where you find the floor dropping out beneath you.  (Eventually, your four-year-old will crawl into a space you just can’t fit into, and you’ll give up and hope that she manages to find her way back to you at some point.)

Heading back outside, you’ll find wire tunnels everywhere, spiraling up to the sky and leading high above the heads of those below.  Every now and then you’ll come across a slide hidden in the tunnel-work, and bravely plunge down it, unsure of where you’ll end up.  (If you follow your children, sooner or later you’ll find yourself fighting your way uphill in a tunnel that is really not designed for someone your size.)  And everywhere, there is elaborate and beautiful artwork built into everything.

There are still four other floors to explore.  Maybe you’ll see a circus act, or maybe you’ll crawl through the tunnels that underlie the circus bleachers.  You can play in a huge indoor skate park (but without skates), or view the world’s largest pencil or largest pair of underwear, or take a train ride through a creepy museum of neon signs and old carnival equipment.  (This part reminded me of our Scooby Doo Wii game, which is set in an old abandoned toy factory.)  You can see turtles and fish in the undersea area, which is covered with beautiful mosaics everywhere you look.  If you want to go from one floor to another, you can take the stairs – or you can find a Slinky-like coil of wire that lets you climb there, hanging over empty space.  And there is much, much more.  We were there for the entire day.

I still don’t think I’m doing this place justice.  Maybe you should look at the web site (http://www.citymuseum.org)  But really, that probably won’t help either.  You should just go there.  We’ll come with you.

***

From Bob:

There was a lady sitting next to me down in the lower level of the caves and she told me her family has been to the City Museum about 20 times.  Her kids love it.  The family was from Akron.  Akron, she said, was about eight hours away from St. Louis.  I asked her if there wasn’t a City Museum in Cleveland or Cincinnati.  She said there wasn’t a place like this anywhere else.

                That’s about all I can say about the City Museum, except to add that is not a place where one asks, “Should I do this?”  The only question at the City Museum is, “Can I do this.”  Anything you can figure out you can do. 

The whole room was detailed mosaics like this one

                Also, although it might not show up in the pictures, I went on the Ferris Wheel, the school bus, and the big mantis slide on the rooftop, and – although I still can’t believe it – I made it up the green tower to the airplane, then off the wing to the other airplane, and then over to the castle.  There were many other climbs and slides, but that was the hairiest.

                The Drury Inn provided us with three meals today – breakfast, including nice waffles, biscuits and sausage patties; lunch, which was mostly bananas and peanut butter taken from the breakfast spread; and dinner.  The seasoned taco meat and refried beans were just as good on a hot dog as they were on the nacho chips.

***

From Zoe:

We went to the City Museum.  It was awesome 

but very hard to describe.  First we went to the roof.  On the roof there was this big white thing going up.  It was like a tube with a slide underneath.  We went 

on it lots of times.  There were also stepping stones, a rope swing, a Ferris wheel, a slide where you could climb up the rope on one side and slide down the other, and a school bus hanging off the roof you could go in.  Near the rope swing was a ten story slide.  The slide went down to the caves.

The caves were my favorite part of the City Museum.  They are awesome.  They have places to climb and secret passages and no maps and are lit up creepily and dimly.  Mom let us wander the caves and explore them.  Next we went to a undersea area.  It was awesome.  Then we went to the huge outdoor structure to climb on.  It was awesome.  There were jets high in the air and wire tunnels and all kind of stuff.  We had lots of fun there.

We’ve reserved this morning for seeing the sights of Hannibal.  We considered skipping it and lighting out for St. Louis immediately, but couldn’t stand to admit this whole side trip to Hannibal was a waste, so we went ahead into town and got tickets for the Mark Twain complex.  It was actually a pretty nice set of buildings (Mark Twain’s boyhood home, Becky Thatcher’s home (under construction), Huck Finn’s house, and a few other miscellaneous dwellings), plus a pretty elaborate museum.  But again – almost no people.  We’re left wondering whether the whole town is a front for some sort of drug running operation or something, because it’s mystifying how anything can stay in business.  In any case, we considered the morning fairly well spent, and headed on to St. Louis in the afternoon.

 (We passed the car time happily with a new game Zoe read about.  One person is “it”, and the others come up with a silly phrase.  “It” has to answer every question with the silly phrase, without laughing.  Most of the family was taken down quickly by “Haggle snaggle huggle snuggle I love Justin Bieber” and the others quickly succumbed to “It was Grandma on a motorcycle with Grammy in the side car” (which spawned many interesting questions).)

We’re treating ourselves in St. Louis, staying at the Drury Inn & Suites.  We have a suite in this nice downtown hotel, which has actually turned out to be a very good deal because it includes free parking, breakfast, and “the 5:30 kick-back”, which is essentially a free dinner plus up to three free drinks each for Bob and me. 

We got in early enough that we decided to head to the Arch, about a 10 minute walk away.  It was around 2pm by this time, and we’d figured out that we’d actually not gotten around to eating lunch (somehow, no one was clamoring for peanut butter sandwiches in the car again), so we stopped at a convenience store and picked up some (suspicious but delicious) chicken fingers and a box of triscuits, found a picnic spot in the park by the Arch, and called it a meal.  At least enough to tide us over until our 5:30 kick-back.

We all got tickets to go up in the Arch, even Bob (though I think this was only because he didn’t want to embarrass himself on this blog.  In the old days there’s no way  I would have gotten him anywhere near this place.)  The visitor center is underground, so that the Arch sits alone on a grassy lawn.  From the center, you sit in a small pod-like contraption (conveniently for us, with 5 seats) that travels up to the top.  It has to change directions as it moves up the Arch, so it kind of feels like a Ferris wheel car.  Interestingly, the doors were clear glass, so you could see the inside of the Arch and all the elevator machinery as you were going up, which was pretty fascinating.

The top of the Arch feels like nothing so much as an airplane, with the same kind of carpet smell and stale, pressurized air.  There are small windows on either side with expansive views.  Though it was a hot, sunny day, we noticed that it was hazy out on the western horizon – and sure enough, by the time we got back down, a thunderstorm was rolling in.  After the worst of it was over, we decided to brave the storm.  It had becoming beautifully cool out, and it seemed like a fun adventure running through the rainy city and watching the lightning in the distance as the storm moved away.

Best of all from the kids’ perspective: we got back in time to use the pool before dinner.  And get some free popcorn, which is another service this wondrous hotel offers.  And after dinner, we did something else we haven’t done in four weeks – watched TV.  (Also, the dinner included both macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers.)  Could this get any better?  Yes, as it turns out, it could – stay tuned for tomorrow.

***

From Bob:

This morning found us back in the water park.  I think our timing here was just right – a few hours in the park last night and a few hours this morning.  Both days, at the end of this time, I was feeling totally shriveled and ready to get out of the water, so I can’t imagine spending a whole day here.  (I should mention that the kids would strenuously disagree with this viewpoint.)  In all honesty I let Bob do the brunt of the water supervision today, while I took a shower and cleaned up the hotel room in peace.  I think I got the better end of the deal.

We arrived in Hannibal, MO in the late afternoon.  This may seem to be a rather oddball destination, but it’s the hometown of Mark Twain, the setting for Tom Sawyer, and (we’d read) a quaint old Mississippi River town.  We finished listening to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the car a couple of days ago, and we all (except maybe Lanie) had really enjoyed it.

We were staying in a campground at the Mark Twain Caves, which features tours of the cave where Tom and Becky got lost in Tom Sawyer.  The campground was nice enough – basically a large grassy field interspersed with big, old trees – but seemed oddly deserted.  (We later found that this would be the theme of everything we saw in Hannibal.)  After setting up the tent we wandered over to check out the cave tours, and were able to book one leaving fifteen minutes later — for which we were the only guests, until another family jumped in late.

We did really enjoy the cave tour, though.  Unlike the other tours we’ve done, which have highlighted the natural, untouched elements of the caves, this one had more of a historical and literary interest.  The walls of many of the passages of the cave were covered with smoke stains and names scratched in the smoke – some from the 1800s and still looking fresh and new.  You could imagine the scenes from Twain’s books, with children flocking through the caves, leaving their mark behind.  There was a room that was supposedly the hide-out for Jesse James, and a room where some creepy doctor performed experiments in trying to petrify a human body.  Plus, of course, all the stories about Tom and Becky and Injun Joe.

We later went into downtown in search of ice cream, and were able to locate Becky Thatcher’s Ice Cream Parlor and Emporium – at which we were the only customers, the whole time we were there.  (If you have ever read the Stephen King novella The Langoliers,  you have a sense of what it felt like to be in Hannibal.)  We also climbed up 244 steps to a historic (and still functioning – whether for practical or entertainment purposes, I’m not sure) lighthouse on a high bluff above the Mississippi.  Then it was back down the semi-deserted streets to sleep at our semi-deserted campground.

***

From Bob:

We had a nice water-slide send off from Kansas  (Jen checked us out of our room at 11, while the rest of us frolicked in the water park until noon.  I think this is legal…)

                Then we added yet another state to our chain.  Missouri is not that much different from Kansas.  There were a lot of famous people born in each.  In Kansas we saw signs for birthplaces of Jesse James, J.C. Penney, General Pershing, Bob Dole and Arlen Spector (same town, even), Abraham Lincoln, and, I think, Eisenhower.  At least Ike’s presidential museum is there.  I don’t know if that means he was born there.

                In Missouri, we have targeted the birthplace of another famous person, Mark Twain.  It was my urging that got this place included in our itinerary, so I have to take credit for the fact that it’s a little of a disappointment.  It seems well setup for receiving tourists, and perhaps it has received a lot of tourists, but there just aren’t a lot of tourists here.  As a result, Hannibal has kind of a ghost town feel.  There are a lot of boarded up shops in antique buildings that look in danger of going extinct. 

                In this respect, Hannibal reminds me not so much of the quaint river town deep in the heart of the New West, but as a river town in southwestern Connecticut.  It was very much like Shelton, the town I grew up in, only without the Wiffleball Factory.  Take away the Wiffleball from Shelton and cover just about everything with Mark Twain and/or Tom, Becky, and Huck, and you have Hannibal, MO.   Gently receding toward their respective rivers are banks flecked with buildings that are not fancy, not well kept, or neither of the above.  There are gaps among them, in Hannibal, and several structures look like they’re ready to come down.  It’s not unlike what I remember seeing in the downtown area of the place where I grew up.  Old factories, old warehouses, old stores, a new public building or two.  The exceptions in Hannibal are the buildings dedicated to the Mark Twain tour, including the house where he spend most of his childhood, and the nice museum in a renovated multi-story stone building on Main Street.

                Granted the Mississippi is a bit more of a storied river than the Housatonic, but based on the river traffic I saw in  Hannibal today, neither river is more than a shadow of what Twain described in his writing.  Huge man-made banks line the waterfront in Hannibal, and where streets intersected these levies, large gates stood, ready to keep out flood waters.  This was a visible nod to the power of the Mississippi, but, otherwise it did not seem overwhelmingly vital to life here.  It is muddy red, though not so much as the most of the Colorado that we drove along, and it is about half again as wide as the Housy

once it meets with the Naugatuck, say where it flows behind Sunnyside School, if you’ve ever seen it from there.

                This is actually the second time we’ve crossed the Mississippi – the first being way back when we entered Iowa from Minnesota.  We had a nice view of it then from Effigy Mounds National Monument, if you remember from our blog posts of about two weeks ago. 

                I don’t remember crossing the Ohio River (it might have been in Cleveland) or the Hudson, though we must have.  We also skipped the heralded Catskill rivers by taking 80 north into Albany.  We may have even crossed the Housatonic when our trip was young and we were exiting New England through western Massachusetts.   Since we crossed, then re-met the Mississippi, though, we have come across several rivers that I knew by reputation and have been interested to see in real life.  Have I mentioned them yet? 

The Colorado, of course, helped guide us and Rt. 70 a good part of the way through the Rockies.  We also took our jet boat tour out of Moab on that river.  We might have even come across it in Utah.  We also saw a portion of the Snake River – I’d have to check the atlas to remind myself which state that was in.  There was lots of rafting action on the Snake.  The Powder River we crossed once or twice.  That river comes up a lot when you’re reading about the old west and Custer’s expeditions.  Speaking of which, we cross the Bighorn River in and amongst the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming.  We also, of course, got several nice views of the Yellowstone River, which was a hot spot for fishing when we saw it.

The most fishermen we’ve seen, however, were in the Rocky Mountain National Park.  The name of the river we hiked along has escaped me, if I ever knew it, but we saw dozens of people wading in or following the banks and casting.  It was a small river, maybe 20 feet wide at its widest point and frequently half that.  I did not see anyone catch anything on any of the rivers we’ve crossed.

More people, apparently,  are reading books about fly fishing than are reading Tom Sawyer these days. The streets of Hannibal were quiet when we ventured downtown for ice cream (at Becky Thatcher’s Ice Cream Emporium) this evening.  Tomorrow we’ll actually tour the museum and historic homes and we’ll see then if anyone is around.     

As if we didn’t spend enough time driving across Kansas last night, today it was here to torment us again.  We eventually got to the children’s museum in Topeka (another children’s museum!  The kids couldn’t believe their luck) which provided a good diversion for a couple of hours.  Then it was on to Kansas City, a destination the kids have been awaiting with great anticipation. 

 As a reward for making it across Kansas, we treated ourselves to a night at the Great Wolf Lodge – a hotel with a huge built-in water park.  (The expectation of this place is what allowed us to pull the kids out of the children’s museum.)  As soon as we walked in the door, bathing suits were donned and the race to the water park was on.

The water park was a lot of fun.  There were five big slides – some of them began and ended in the indoor water park, but went outside in between.  There was a four-story “tree house” filled with climbing structures and lots of water features.  (Every few minutes a huge bucket on the top tipped and dropped 1000 gallons of water to the floor below – that is a lot of water.  Unlike the kids, I wouldn’t stand under it.)  There was a “lazy river” tubing float ride, a few pools, some small kids’ slides, and various other water-based activities.

Lanie was thrilled because she was able to go on almost everything, despite her age.  She has no fear of anything water-related, which is both a blessing and a curse.  (Luckily, she has no objection to wearing a life vest all day, which helps our stress level.)

For dinner we walked across the street to “Famous Dave’s Barbeque”, where, hungry from climbing all those water slide stairs, we proceeded to order way too much food.  Barbecue leftovers for breakfast tomorrow!

From Bob:

One of the drawbacks to three or four Disney vacations is that every trip you take tends to have mouse ears stamped on it.  You’ve already heard us mention Disneyesque a few times in relation to places with natural wonders that seemed too perfect to be natural.

                This place, the Great Wolf Lodge, does not exactly fall into that category.  It is the least natural place imaginable; but it is a wonder, and very Disneyesque.   It falls on the calculated, orchestrated, fabricated side of the mouse ears, very well done, in its way, but not a bit subtle.

                They pack a theme park into this hotel (www.greatwolf.com/).  They have their own lineup of cartoon characters who show up in the grand lobby and are on signs all over the hotel.  There are restaurants, themed hallways, and, of course, the water slides.  It’s pretty decadent, but it also meshes nicely with the way our trip is going. We can’t live by peanut butter, national parks alone, and wholesome family resorts alone.  I’ll admit that I’ve even purchased a few loaves of white bread on this trip – and not the crusty French or Italian kind, either.  But there are no regrets.

                If this, and the Discovery Center, are the memories that the kids bring home of Kansas, don’t be surprised if one or three of them wind up settling in Kansas City.  Or Topeka.