Friday, May 20, 2016

We had a wonderful indoor activity, due to the overcast skies and a bit drizzly at times.  We went to the Mark Twain State Park, where they have the home that Mark Twain (birth name was Samuel Clemens) was born in and lived until he was four years old.  They then moved to Hannibal, MO which was to have a big impact on his life. It was an earthcache, so we knew we were going to learn a lot.  They had a great 15 minute video and then we could see the many displays they had about him and his family.  It was wonderfully done!  This was a good beginning for us, as we plan to go to Hannibal tomorrow and/or Sunday to experience the rest of the story!  We did some geo-caching as we traveled to the state park, but we were limited as to what we could do.  This is a tick infested area, and each time we went to retrieve a cache, one of us had a tick on us!  We didn't do much caching today, needless to say!  We did travel all around Mark Twain Lake, today and after checking the other campgrounds out, we picked the best one.

This is Clara's Overlook, and she was Mark Twain's sister.  She was an opera singer and married into a wealthy family.  She lived her adult life in California. If you can read the sign at the base of the railing, it showed flood stage in 2008, which rose to the base of this overlook!

This is the birth place of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and it consisted of two rooms. He was born in Florida, MO on Nov. 30, 1835.  For siblings, he had two brothers and two sisters - and a teenage slave.

 This is the bedroom for Mark Twain's parents. 

 This shows the living quarters for the family.  Notice the beautiful Log Cabin Quilt on the bed.

This tells of his life in a nutshell.

 We got a great view of the Clarence Cannon Dam and Mark Twain Lake.

These flowers were in a garden at the dam headquarters.  They are Shadow Primrose and remind us of the Evening Primrose that we see in Arizona.  Very pretty.