Where to Next? Mark Twain and the Mississippi River (by Sunshine)

Our first Luna Moth of the trip

As we left Kansas City we realized there were no more “must see” places to visit on our list. Yet we still had six days and two states before our final camping stop in Minnesota. We studied the atlas, checked the weather forecast, and decided a Mark Twain/Mississippi River theme sounded like fun. We drove east across Missouri to Mark Twain State Park on Monday, August 17^th. Since it was a weekday and Missouri schools must have started already, we were one of only a handful of people in the campground. Missouri was the first place we started to get the feel of home again. The air was humid and there was green everywhere – grass, understory, bushes, trees. There was dew in the morning and mosquitoes at night. Being back in the Midwest also brought a plethora of ticks, poison ivy, and nettles.

Being silly at Mark Twain Lake

In the morning (August 18), we hiked around Mark Twain Lake (a giant reservoir) which was quite low but to Jim’s delight exposed fossils of ancient sea creatures in the limestone layers. Then we went to see the home where Mark Twain was born. Walden couldn’t remember whose house we were going to see and kept asking “When will we get to John Denver’s house?” What does it say that after this trip the two people we’ve never met but can be identified by Walden are John Muir and John Denver? Anyway, the two-room log cabin has been relocated from its original location in the nearby town (if you can even call it that) of Florida. The cabin has been restored and is entirely enclosed inside a building that serves as a museum, visitor center, gift shop, and Mark Twain shrine (their word, not ours). Walden’s favorite part of the visit was pretending to pet the cat statues sitting in Mark Twain’s bedroom. Since it was still early in the day and we knew a series of thunderstorms were moving through the area that afternoon we drove about 20 minutes to the M. W. Boudreaux Visitor Center on the dam that creates Mark Twain Lake (reservoir). It was exciting to see the dark storm clouds sweep across the lake from the lookout. The Army Corps of Engineers building had some interesting exhibits and kids activities that kept Walden occupied for the duration of the storm. Not surprisingly though, we were the only ones there.

Whitewashing Tom Sawyer's fence

The next day (August 19), we drove east to Hannibal, Missouri. This is the more well-known center of Mark Twain historical sites. The entire town celebrates its connection to Mark Twain as every business is tied in some way to Twain’s writings – the Injun Joe Café, Mark Twain Brewery, Aunt Polly’s antiques, etc. Hannibal is the location of Twain’s boyhood home which is part of a museum. A ticket buys you entrance to Becky Thatcher’s House, Huckleberry Finn’s House, the Interpretive Center which encompasses Twain’s House, and a few other sites made famous by Twain’s stories. There is also a museum where you can become part of scenes from some of Twain’s books such as a cave, river raft, stagecoach, and steamboat. Walden even got to whitewash a fence like being a part of Tom Sawyer’s gang. It was an interesting experience and my big take away was learning that Mark Twain wrote a lot more books than I ever realized including stories about his world travels. After lunch, we took a stroll along the Mississippi to see the riverboats, stopped at a playground, and climbed 100 some stairs to a lighthouse built to commemorate Twain’s 100^th birthday. It blew over once in a windstorm (apparently plywood wasn’t an ideal choice for a tall building atop a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River) but was rebuilt (rebar was added to the plywood the second time) so has an interesting story. After leaving the historic part of town along the river, we discovered the newer part of town and made a pit stop for a much needed oil change. That evening we drove north to Wakonda State Park in Missouri.

Maybe Walden will carry Daddy one day

Wakonda State Park was rather interesting for several reasons. We found a beautiful campsite on the shore of a shallow lake shaded by cottonwoods, with only one other camper in sight. But the park is right next to a four lane highway. This seems like a rather odd location until you learn that it was developed around six lakes created by the highway department when they dug gravel for the road bed. The park is surrounded by farm fields, so the hiking trails provide a great view of corn and soybeans. The next morning (August 20), we took a hike on a trail recommended by the teenage girl working in the office. (The office was open from 7 am until 10 pm and there were a total of four people in the campground in addition to a campground host. The park charges no entrance fee for daily visitors so we are pretty sure the office staff gets a lot of reading done.) Our hike took us around one of the lakes which required swamping through tall grass and large mud puddles. Luckily Walden was in the backpack the entire time so kept dry. We spent time at the playground before leaving since we had several hours of driving ahead of us. Luckily we happened up on a garage sale on the outskirts of a small town and loaded up on new books for Walden and some other fun toys for the car ride. That afternoon we crossed into Iowa and camped at Maquoketa Caves State Park.

Before going to bed Jim and I noticed some itchy red bumps on our legs. We took note hoping it wasn’t poison ivy or tick bites. When we woke up, we both found several more bumps so we removed all of our bedding and shook it to loosen any spiders that might have crawled in. We didn’t see anything suspicious. By the time we ate breakfast I was developing new bumps by the minute. They were intensely itchy but thankfully Walden didn’t have any. Remember the hike we took through the tall wet grass at Wakonda State Park in Missouri? The one where Walden was on Jim’s back the whole time? It took an entire day of speculating, itching, and pondering to figure out we had CHIGGERS! We’d never had them before and boy do they suck. I’d heard stories of chiggers – little black bugs with red legs but this was my first encounter. The funny part of this is that Jim gives a program called Biting Bugs for his interpretive students every year. We don’t have chiggers in Wisconsin so he wasn’t familiar with them like he is with mosquitoes, deer flies, and ticks. After only five minutes of Googling, he was super excited about the tubular mouth parts chiggers use to squirt enzymes into your skin and liquefy the cells and slurp them up (we even had to look for the little red dots in the center of our chigger bites that are the mouth tubes left behind). I honestly think he’s disappointed chiggers aren’t found in Wisconsin because he can’t include them in his Biting Bugs program. Apparently you can take a man away from his office but you can’t take the interpretive passion out of his heart.

Cave explorer

Maquoketa Caves’ website explained the park contains Iowa’s largest concentration of caves. We kind of rolled our eyes at this since Iowa isn’t exactly known for caves like Kentucky is. We thought Walden might get a kick out of it since he enjoyed the lava tube caves in Idaho so much. Wow – this park is a gem! After getting a map and explanation of white-nosed syndrome, we are asked to walk over some mats to clean our shoes (which consequently were completely dry??) and then set free to explore. We were amazed that we could explore the caves on our own and for free. After seeing so many caves that were privately owned, charged fees that made us think twice, and being told not to touch anything or go off any trail, we were surprised by the freedom. There are 16 caves identified on the map and numerous others that could be seen high above the trails. The main trail follows a bubbling stream through a wooded gorge with steep limestone bluffs (filled with caves), tunnels through the largest cave (Dancehall Cave) under the park road, and dips underneath a massive natural rock arch that spans the valley. It’s an absolutely beautiful setting. Side trails wind through the woods every which way and aren’t well marked, but we decided this added to the feeling of exploring and discovering the unknown. The caves range from being large enough to stand in with paved walkways and lights, to holes just large enough to wiggle into that required a headlamp to explore. I preferred the larger caves, but Walden and Jim loved crawling into the tiny spaces and reporting back about the large rooms they found filled with crickets and interesting rocks. There are few cave formations (they were taken by visitors prior to the park being formed), but we didn’t miss them because exploring on our own was so much fun. I’d highly recommend this park if you’re looking for a fun weekend excursion in the upper Midwest. The campground is nice, the bathroom facility is new, and there is a playground. Iowa State Parks don’t charge a daily fee and non-electric camping is only $11 per night.

Just enough room to wiggle in

We found a caterpillar friend

So many neat caves

Where the Wisconsin River meets the Mississippi

After exploring the caves (August 21), we drove to Pike’s Peak State Park along the Mississippi River. Yep, we went to the summit of another Pikes Peak! It is named for Zebulon Pike - the same Pike of the Peak in Colorado. The park offers great views up and down the river from the high bluffs. Across the river from the park, we could see where the Wisconsin River meets the Mississippi River and got our first view of Wisconsin since we left in March.

Our last national site for the trip

In the morning (August 22), we hiked to a small waterfall that dribbles over limestone ledges and through woods that felt like those at home. We saw ruby-throated hummingbirds and picked blackberries. We began to feel a bit sad that our journey was coming to an end. That afternoon we visited Effigy Mounds National Monument just up the river from the park. Jim had been there as a young boy and reminisced that this was the first national monument he had been to. The visitor center was the place he gained ideas of what interpretation should be. It was from those ideas that he developed his own childhood nature center in an old storage shed behind his house in Kohler-Andrae State Park. The amazing experience he remembered from his childhood was not repeated as an adult. Now that his professional career revolves around interpretation – teaching about it, writing books about it, consulting and developing master plans for sites around the country – going back to Effigy Mounds was….well… rather disappointing. The park itself is interesting and contains significant historical meaning because it contains the largest concentration of effigy mounds left in the country. There are 16 miles of trails, boardwalks, and a visitor center.

Junior Ranger hike

I can’t imagine the site gets much funding from the federal government so they have to do the best they can with what they have. The movie is not one of the newly created high budget ones we’d seen on the trip. It appears to be from the 1970s or 80s and is great because it is so retro (like watching the Brady Bunch). The whole time we were at the site Jim kept saying “There’s so much potential here. They could have created a cross-section of a mound to show what they contain. They could have shown actual artifacts from the mounds. They could …” I felt a little sad for Jim. It was like one of his special childhood memories had been tarnished. You know, like when you go back to a place that is so awesome in your memory and discover that in reality it wasn’t at all like you picture in your head and you kind of wish you hadn’t gone back because you can’t erase the new image. Despite all this, we had a fun family experience and Walden earned his final Junior Ranger badge for the trip.

Feeding the geese Dandelion leaves

Ancient White Park Cattle from the British Isles

Rewind to last March - right before we left on our trip I received the Seed Saver’s Exchange catalog in the mail. Boy was I disappointed there would be no seeds and no garden this year because we would be away all summer. I noticed in the back of the catalog they had a visitor center in Iowa and thought it would be interesting to visit someday. Fast forward to now (August 23) – between Pike’s Peak State Park and our next destination in Minnesota is Decorah, Iowa – home of the Seed Saver’s Exchange Visitor Center! This is another place I’d highly recommend to anyone looking for a place to visit in Iowa (even if you aren’t a gardener). The visitor center is a new building that contains a sales area and small exhibit space. What they lack in exhibits they make up for in experience. There are acres and acres of demonstration gardens filled with beautiful flowers and vegetables. Everything is labeled in case you want to grow it yourself. There are heritage geese, ducks, turkeys, and chickens that love to be fed dandelion leaves through the fence. Miles of trails take you along a creek, over the bluffs, and through the woods. You can see the rare white cattle they preserve along with the greenhouses and cold storage. There is a new orchard with 400 varieties of apple trees once native to the Midwest. There is also an old apple orchard you can wander through and sample apples of every kind you’ve ever imagined. They also have a vineyard of cold hardy grapes. The entire property is immaculately kept. There is slide and sand play area for kids as well as picnic tables. Everything is free which is amazing.  With all this beautiful produce I was itching for some fresh vegetables. We were in farm country but unlike California, there were no roadside produce stands to be found. I’ll have my eyes open for something on the way home.