A Whole New Meaning for "Corn Fed Beef"

Two happy old men at the Jewel Box discussing their lost jewels

After a good night's rest and a good breakfast, we started again.  Our first visit was to Forest Park in St Louis.  This is a park with over 1000 acres located right in the city of St Louis.   We saw the golf course, zoo, science museum, walking trails, and tennis courts......as we drove by them.   We did stop for the Jewel Box, which was the conservatory.  It is a modern looking building housing nice plants.  Not that many plants, tho...mostly weddings and social events are held there now.  I did find some nice looking gentlemen inside tho'......

Jewel Box Conservatory

Outside the building were many fine specimens of plants.  There was also a Korean Memorial with a huge sundial.

After leaving the conservatory we moseyed towards Hannibal, Mo, home of Mark Twain.  We followed highways with the names of ZZ, C, A, YY, and rolled thru towns with names like Clarkesville, Annadon, Louisiana and New London.  The roads were two lanes and would twist and turn like the Mississippi itself as we followed alongside the river.  The land was rolling again in some places and in others it was flat as could be.  It was along this ride that we saw miles and miles and miles and miles of corn.  Not green corn, but dried up, yellow, dead corn.  Only once did we see the corn being harvested.  A dump truck was leaving a field after having been filled by a combine.  The truck was filled with shelled yellow corn kernels.  It was amazing that that big machine was cutting the corn stalk, shucking the corn, and shelling it into the truck.  Never seen such a thing and it was amazing.  I guess with all the rain that poured down in the last week or so has slowed down corn harvesting.  Somebody better get busy before cooler weather comes!  We saw many silos of all sizes to store all the corn.

One thing we did see was Locke and Dam #25.  It was here that we saw a tugboat pushing a barge thru a locke.  The damn stretched all the way across the river and on the side was the locke that made it possible for the barge and tugboat to adjust to the water depth and get thru.  Actually, there were several barges the tugboat was pushing along.

Barges being pushed by tugboat thru locke

Hannibal is a small town.  Have not seen a building over three stories high.  We are staying at the Best Western on the main street passing thru.  Mark Twain's home is one block away, and the river is two blocks away.  We walked around the town, or at least the touristy part of it.  I found a quilt shop, dropped a hundred bucks, and walked out a happy quilter.  Terry 'bout dropped his drawers.  (Little does he know about the cost of quilting!)  We walked down by the riverfront, seeing tugboats and a paddle wheeler.  We toured the home of Mark Twain.  It was actually bigger than we thought it would be.  After reading a lot of the signs posted around, I left wanting to read some more about Samuel Clemens.

We took our turn at white washing!

And, once again, I saw another flood wall, this time in the form of a levee and a built in insert just waiting for the concrete gate when the flood waters rise.

Dave standing where gate will be placed when flood waters rise

Altho' we had many choices for supper tonight, our two main choices were LulaBelle's, an old whore house, or Rustic Oak Riverview Restaurant, a restaurant overlooking the river.  Since Terry said he was NOT eating in a whorehouse, the choice became real easy.  We dined on the outside balcony watching the water drift slowly south, birds coming in to nest for the night, and several trains passing by, too.  We had fantastic pies for dessert: some kind of fruit for the boys that had strawberries, rhubarb, peaches and blackberries in it, and caramel, pecan and apple cobbler for the girls.