Hannibal, MO and the Tom Sawyer Cave

So we left Brownsburg, IN this morning at 6:30 as usual and headed for Hannibal, Missouri. We changed time zones once we hit Illinois so we gained an hour on our day. I say we are ahead of you folks back home although Molly would beg to differ and say I'm behind. But in any case, that made the 300 mile trip to Hannibal feel alot shorter. We arrived at the Tom Sawyer cave around 10 am... just about the same time a bus load of 5th graders arrived. How exciting! Rather than share the cave with a bunch of obnoxious kids we decided we'd go check out the town and see the other sites and come back to the cave for the 11am tour.
We headed into town to see the rest of the sites along the mighty Mississippi riverbank. We got to see Tom Sawyers house (aka the Mark Twain Boyhood Home), Becky Thatchers House, The Tom and Huck Statue, The prison that held Muff Potter(there isn't actually a prison there...just a sign that said there might have been one at some point), and the Mark Twain Riverboat. It was a rather bleak and run-down old town but brought back many memories from the book.

Here's a few pictures from town


The town


Big Muddy


Tom and Huck Statue


Mark Twain Boyhood Home and The famous whitewashed fence



Missouri is known as "the cave state." There are two caves in Hannibal, the Mark Twain/Tom Sawyer Cave and The Cameron Cave. We took a tour of the Tom Sawyer Cave. It was an hour long tour that was given by a guide. The walk through was 5/8 of a mile and went 350 feet underground. The cave has been outfitted with lights that the guide switches on and off as you go through. At one point in the cave we stopped in the room where Tom and Becky lost their candles and got lost in the dark. The guide showed us what it would have been like for them by shutting off all the lights in the cave. It was complete darkness, the darkest dark i've ever experienced. You could stand there forever and your eyes would never adjust.
Up until 1997 when the cave was deemed a national landmark, anyone that visited the cave was able to carve, paint or sign there name on the cave walls. The cave walls are littered with signatures that go all the way back to the mid 1800's when the cave was discovered. Some are written in candle smoke which produces bold black letterforms on the walls and ceilings. In the 1870's Jesse James and his gang robbed a train in Saverton, MO. After fleeing the robbery site they found refuge in the Tom Sawyer cave. There is a room in the cave where Jesse's gangs signatures can be found. I tried to take as many pictures as I could inside the cave but the lighting conditions were hard to deal with. Some of the pictures are blurry or hard to see but you'll get the idea.

Walking through the tunnels of the cave




Some signatures made with candle smoke



The Cross at Number 2 - Where Tom and Huck found the treasure buried



Seal Rock - The blue light is added for effect but there is a natural pool of water that gathers beneath the seal shaped rock




After the visit in Hannibal we headed further west to beat the sever weather headed our way. We are staying in St. Joseph, MO for the night and head 600 miles to Denver tomorrow. It'll be another long day but we gain another hour once we cross over into mountain time about 2/3 of the way through Nebraska. Probably won't update again until Sunday night or so.

Until then...