The M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I!

 

Do you remember as a grade school kid learning that little chant to help you remember how to spell Mississippi? I do, just as easily as I remember that riveting poetry, "Pop, pop, pop, goes the popcorn in the pan! Pop, pop, pop! You can catch me if you can!" (Yes, sometimes I can't remember why I walk in a room, but I remember grade school poetry).

Our trip back from Chicago included a stop in Hannibal, Mo. It is located on the banks of the M-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. As I mentioned in the earlier blog post from LeClaire, Iowa, Randy is fascinated by our country's major rivers. It's not like he grew up by the water - unless you count Peace Creek or Rattlesnake Creek. But he's fascinated, nonetheless. 

As we were figuring out our itinerary for the trip to Chicago for the wedding, he planned the stop on our way back home at Hannibal, Missouri. Several weeks before the trip, Randy called the Mark Twain river boat, hoping to book a dinner cruise on the Mississippi. But the day we were to be there, the river boat was booked for a private event. He was disappointed, but we still decided to stop in Hannibal. We could still see the river up close instead of from the top of a highway bridge. And we knew Hannibal provided plenty of history with the Mark Twain museum attractions. 

From the shoreline, we watched the Mark Twain river boat set sail that Sunday evening as they motored down the Mississippi with a private group.

Earlier in the day, we had seen the boat out on the river - along with a dramatic sky!

We also got to see a tug boat - the Sir Randall - taking off from the Center Street Landing. However, we weren't able to see it perform its duties after it departed.

We were thrilled to discover there were hour-long scenic cruises offered - sans meal service - on the Mark Twain river boat. We booked two spots on the boat for the next day.

My travel companion was a happy camper - or happy boater.

 We sat up on the third deck so we could have a wide open view.

 

We saw the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse from the river. We did not walk up its 244 steps. 

I think one of the reasons Randy is interested in major rivers is because they serve as a thoroughfare in moving and exporting grain. 

This barge was loaded with wheat. Another barge parked out in the river was loaded with cement from the Continental Cement Plant, a business that's been operating in Hannibal since 1903. The riverboat captain said the company's cement has been used in many construction projects, including the Empire State Building and the Panama Canal.  More recently, the cement was used in the Minnesota Vikings’ new football stadium and the St. Louis Cardinals’ newest baseball stadium.

Coming back onto the landing after our cruise.

The riverboat captain also recommended going to Riverview Park, and we were glad he did. What beautiful views of the Mighty Mississippi!

From there, we could also see the grain handling facility - another bonus for Randy. It was located right along the river and by a train track.

A giant statue of Mark Twain also looked over the river from the park. It commemorates Twain's days as a riverboat captain. In 1859, he became a licensed pilot on the Lower Mississippi River. 

 

When his piloting career ended with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Clemens went to the Nevada Territory where he first used the pen name Mark Twain in 1863 while writing for The Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nev. Clemens took the name from the river sounding that indicated 12 feet of water, which was safe for navigation. 

I told Randy this photo would be more impressive if you couldn't see the cars in the museum parking lot - ha!

Before our river excursion, we toured the Mark Twain Museum complex.  It included the Huckleberry Finn House, Mark Twain Boyhood Home, Becky Thatcher House, and Grant's Drug Store.

Twain wrote his many books at this desk, including those about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

Mark Twain was a master at "stretching" the truth and adding exciting details to dress up stories. Real people were developed into exciting and colorful characters. He used his childhood in Hannibal to inspire the characters.

The museum has an impressive display of Norman Rockwell art. Already famous for his Saturday Evening Post covers, Rockwell got the opportunity in 1935 to illustrate editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I discovered that none of the previous illustrators had taken the trouble to visit Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain had lived as a boy. ... After I'd been in Hannibal for a few days, I had a sketchbook full of authentic details.

Norman Rockwell

The edition of Tom Sawyer with Rockwell's illustrations appeared in 1936 and Huckleberry Finn in 1940. Rockwell gave them to the Mark Twain Museum before his death in 1978.  

As an avid reader and a former newspaper writer and editor, it was interesting to me to learn that Twain was not without his naysayers. Book banning is nothing new.

The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor and that of a very coarse type. He regards it was the veriest trash. The librarian and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums that to intelligent, respectable people.

The Boston Transcript

March 1885

Mark Twain definitely didn't take himself too seriously.

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water. But everybody likes water.

Mark Twain

 

Since we returned home, Randy has re-read both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

The home of Tom Blankenship, who Twain used as inspiration for the character Huck Finn.

 We also had to visit Becky Thatcher's Ice Cream Parlor.

After leaving Hannibal, we also enjoyed an overnight stop in Kansas City, where we got to see these two. 

We ate supper at the Kansas City Taco Co. and had ice cream at Betty Rae's. Then we listened to jazz at the Green Lady Lounge. I didn't get a photo, but we were also glad to see our friend, Barb, before returning home - just in time to make dinner for 40 for the Core group two days later. Back to reality!

Well, It Was Mammoth

 

Mammoth Cave was ... well, Mammoth. But it was probably our least favorite stop on our trip.  And that was a surprise.

Randy, especially, was excited to add a check mark to another National Park after our trip last fall that included six national parks in Colorado, Utah and Arizona. I think both of us were expecting beautiful formations like those found in Carlsbad Caverns, which we visited B.C. (Before Children). Randy also took Jill & Brent to the Caverns when they were on a trip to visit relatives in New Mexico.

But it wasn't like that at all. Honestly, I was more concerned about staying upright on the uneven walkways. Before we ever descended the 200 stairs to get to our tour of the cave's Cleaveland Avenue, the park ranger put the fear of God into us. He cautioned that it would take hours for any rescue crews to respond to a medical emergency or an injury from a fall. Yikes! Way to welcome your guests!

Mammoth Cave National Park includes more than 400 miles of surveyed passages. These days, you have to have reservations to tour the different portions of the cave. Randy chose Cleaveland Avenue, which was rated "moderate" in difficulty. 

I had trouble getting good photos since it was so dimly lit.  And, again, I was trying to stay upright, so I didn't add pulling the camera from my pocket too frequently. (That kind of sounds like my excuses when there were limited photos from gathering and working cattle, doesn't it?)

According to the park, "it shelters a long and complex underground labyrinth.  The mysteries of this amazing natural laboratory have inspired and sustained human discovery for thousands of years."

The caves are karst landscapes, in which water moves rapidly underground by dissolving rock. Mammoth Cave's karst landscape is part of the U.S.'s largest regions of cavernous rocks. Caves and springs commonly occur in karst regions like Kentucky, southern Missouri and Florida. The karst landscape is why the Sky Dome at the National Corvette Museum in nearby Bowling Green collapsed in 2014. (See my earlier blog HERE.)

Karst is key to Mammoth Cave's origin because rock must be readily dissolved by mildly acidic water for cave passageways to form. What Mammoth Cave has that some other karst caves lack is an insoluble sandstone "roof." Sandstone protects the rocks below it. 

Cleaveland Avenue, where we toured, is tube shaped. It was formed as water flowed softly at the water table. Often such tubes are filled with water as they are formed.

A slightly different angle.

Mammoth Cave was formed by water sinking into the ground and flowing through underground streams to the Green River. As the Green River eroded a deeper course, the underground streams abandoned old beds and dissolved new, lower cave passageways.

Mammoth Cave was discovered in 1802. In 1926, Congress passed an Act to accept lands donated to the government to form a brand new national park at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. At the time, the Mammoth Cave region was full of farmland and homesteads and needed to be prepared for its future park service status. Construction and improvements took place on both the surface and in the cave itself. This included destroying undesirable structures and reducing fire hazards, and building trails, a park amphitheater, as well as many other park structures to support the park’s mission.

The walkways we used were built during the Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). President Franklin Roosevelt created the CCC to put young men, aged 19 to 25, to work during the Depression. During the nine years CCC was in service, more than three million enrollees signed up to live and work in 4,500 camps that stretched across the U.S., including at Mammoth Cave. 

National Park Service photo of CCC workers at Mammoth Cave

For each day that a young man would work, he received $1 dollar. Within a month’s time, he earned $30, five of which he could keep, and the rest was sent to his family to help put food on the table and a keep a roof over their heads. This program addressed two distinct problems facing America; it provided employment for needy young men while also working to solve ecological challenges of conservation. They also planted many of the trees in the Mammoth Cave National Park. 

Four CCC camps were established in Mammoth Cave Park, with each of the camps housing 200 to 250 young men. The CCC often sent workers far from home to work on projects, yet several men from the local communities were part of the Mammoth Cave camps. 

Since those walkways were established some time ago, they are deteriorating and uneven.

Our park ranger asked the question, "Did this rock fall that way or was it placed by human hands?" He didn't really ever answer the question, but rather, told a joke.

 

 

 

Early visitors to the cave often couldn't resist leaving behind a sort of "I was here" mark by writing their names on the cave walls. That will get you arrested these days.

My favorite moment was when the park ranger turned off the lights and the lantern and sang. Obviously, you can't see a thing in this video, but just turn it up and listen:

Thankfully, he turned on the lantern again before we continued on our tour.

Gypsum may also grow outwards in shapes that resemble flowers, like this one:

Flowers, like crusts, form as the gypsum extrudes from the rock (like toothpaste from a tube). In a crust, all the crystal grow at about the same speed, but to form a flower, some of the crystals grow faster than others.

Our tour ended in the Snowball Room. At least, that's what they called it.

They are globular white gypsum balls that cover the ceiling. 

Thankfully, the elevator to the surface worked. All the way through the cave, I had prayed for that outcome. I was not relishing reversing our route and then walking up all 200 steps. 

More from our trip to come.

No, It's Not Our Corvette

 

I had an interesting conversation in the bathroom of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky. Before we even got started on our perusal of the museum, we made the prerequisite stop known to all retirement-age people. Yes, the bathroom. As I was washing my hands, a lady said, "Are you the one picking up the new Corvette?"

I almost turned around to see who she was talking to, but since we were the only two at the sinks at that time, I figured it was me.

I smiled. (Didn't I use great restraint not to laugh hysterically?) And I politely responded, "No, it's not us!" 

There was a special place at the museum to pick up custom Corvettes. 

Here's Randy, trying to look sad that the only Corvette he got at the museum was Matchbox-sized. (He also got a golf ball and a new shirt. OK, true confessions: I got a sweatshirt and a Christmas ornament at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.)

We did see a few salesmen leaning over cars on the showroom floor, pointing out the features of a brand new Corvette to potential buyers.

But most of the Corvettes we saw were in the beautifully-designed museum showrooms. 

I took a photo of one below because it had a Kansas tag.

It was a 1963 Corvette with a split window in the back. According to the museum signs, the split window is "one of the most universally beloved Corvette models." At the time when Bill Mitchell was at his creative peak, he sought a uniquely American sports car form. Mitchell's direction to designers was "to put a crease in the pants." This is evident in the fender forms and the crease running the length of the car, still used today. However, the controversial split window disappeared after only one year.

I had to take a photo of the 1988 Corvette because that's the year Brent was born. The 1988 Corvette represented the company's 35th anniversary. (And, ironically, Brent celebrated his 35th birthday yesterday.)

Corvette missed its own 30th anniversary when the 1983 car didn't make it to production in time. So, to mark the 35th anniversary, a special package was added for coupes for an additional $4,795. Only 2,050 35th anniversary edition Corvettes were made. This one had only 380 miles on the odometer.

Speaking of vintage cars, this 1957 version was produced in my birth year. The Corvette Super Sport was designed to "create a vision of what racing cars should be." The SS Racer competed and was capable of "amazing speed," but was rushed through development. The team failed to insulate the driver effectively from the extreme heat of the mechanicals. Despite what engineers called "teething pains," it was hailed as one of the most beautiful racers of the era.

Probably the most fascinating part of the museum for us was a display about the February 12, 2014, sinkhole that swallowed up eight one-of-a-kind Corvettes under the floor of the museum's Skydome. It happened in the early morning hours, so no one was in the museum at the time. When emergency personnel arrived, they discovered a sinkhole 40 feet wide and 25 to 30 feet deep.

Of the eight cars that fell into the hole, the museum owned six and General Motors owned two, including the 1 millionth car to come off the assembly line.

Photo from the National Corvette Museum website

The value of those cars was estimated at $1 million. 

The remaining 20 cars in the Skydome were removed later that day for safekeeping. Two years later, the Skydome reopened and now tells the story of what happened and why. Kentucky is one of the states notable for having karst topography, a landscape formed from the dissolving of rocks such as limestone. (It's not far from Mammoth Cave, which was formed the same way. More on our Mammoth Cave visit is coming up on the blog.) 

While most of the museum featured Corvettes (as you'd expect in a Corvette museum), I couldn't resist a photo by a bright purple 1951 Chevy,

The 1951 Chevy street cruiser was designed by Carl Casper. Casper may have thought it was painted in Purple Passion Candy, but we Wildcat fans know it's K-State purple.

Of course, we had to get a Batmobile photo, too. Casper's designs also attracted Hollywood's attention. Warner Bros. tasked Carl Casper with building three Batmobiles that could be used in promoting the film, "Batman Returns." Casper also designed the Dukes of Hazard General Lee and The A-Team's crime-fighting van. 

Here was his Cosmic Invader. No wonder his cars were popular at car shows throughout the country.

More from Bowling Green next time.