Day 7, Friday, July 3

We crossed the Mighty Mississippi again and started the day in Quincy, Illinois at the "All Wars Museum." Barry was like a kid at Christmas because he knows so much about our wars, which ends up being a good education for me. There were good people there telling good stories.

Then we crossed back over the Mississippi for a tour hour two of Hannibal, Mo. Hannibal is the home of Mark Twain - I had forgotten what a humorous writer he was. There were some of his quotes all over his boyhood home as well as several of the other buildings. For instance his quote on the shirt I bought - "Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."  This trip steers me toward doing things when I get back - ordering and reading Tom Sawyer again is one of them.

Speaking of Tom Sawyer, it was Tom Sawyer days in Hannibal. The town is quite a tourist attraction these days and hundreds of people were in for the festivities. They were having a 64 team mud pit volleyball tournament - 3 males and 3 females per team. Looked like a lot of fun. We stayed dry. We also made no comments about women in mud. Then we watched the Tom Sawyer fence painting races. Eleven year old boys dressed up as Tom Sawyer sprinted 20 yards to a five foot section of fence, whitewashed their section as quickly as they could with milk paint, then sprinted back. It was a great day in America's heartland.

We then left, crossed over the Mighty Miss for the fourth time in two days and took off for south central Illinois. On the way we passed one town named Barry, and then ended up near the town of Gillespie, where we're staying tonight. We hope to produce a July 4 kind of day tomorrow in our last full day of wandering. It's been a great trip although sometimes we don't eat so well. Which reminds me of this quote I saw from Mark Twain:  "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."