Hannibal

Hannibal. First stop was lunch at Bubba's in an old grocery building. Had the crawfish and alligator sausage combo, with onion sticks and jumbalaya as sides. The rootbeer float was more ice cream than float, so they gave me more root beer later for it. Good food.

We then went to Mark Twain cave, the actual cave used in Tom Sawyer. The red line is the tour path - the grey lines are where we can get lost.

The original entrance discovered ca. 1820 (when a hunter followed his dog who had chased a panther into it) is visible, but now boarded up.

Its right near the entrance used for tours, added 70 years later.

The cave looks different than others we've visited in MO - mostly dry limestone.

Now and then are calcite crystals embedded in the rock. Apparently people first thought these were diamonds, though the fact they were brittle should have given them away.

Although several caves claim to have been a Jesse James hideout, this one actually was as they found his signature elsewhere in the cave.

Before it became a national landmark, visitors were encouraged to write their names on the cave walls...

...or draw. This caraciture of Mark Twain was drawn in 1923 by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch cartoonist.

The "post office" where Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher would exchange notes.

The discoloration in the celing of a bat column - several hundred (thousand?) bats would cling to each other in a column that reached from the roof to almost the floor. Tom and Becky backed into one, scattering the bats, and scaring them both.