May 11, 2014, Florida, Missouri and Mark Twain

We were on the road by 7:30.  The Central Time Zone is good for my sleep habits.  It started raining shortly after we were on the road but we drove out of it and the rest of the day just kept improving.  As we approached St. Louis and the Mississippi River, I again took a dozen photos trying to get a good one of the arch  I think I finally succeeded.  Both the the Mississippi River and the Missouri River as well as all the lakes were brown with silt as there has been a lot of rain.

Despite the lack of all electronic maps (no internet or phone service), we arrived at Indian Creek Campground on Mark Twain Lake mid afternoon.  Our neighbor came right over to talk and told us all the campers had happy hour in the restrooms last night due to a tornado warning.  They got lots of rain but no tornado.

We had lunch and drove down the west side of the lake to Mark Twain State Park.  The visitor's center is called the Mark Twain Memorial Shrine.  The two room house where he was born was moved to this site and the present building surrounding it was built in 1959.   There was a film on his life and much memorabilia including the original handwritten Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  One of the things he is noted for is creating new words either by tweaking other words or by compounding words that had not previously been used together.  There were two walls in a display that had all these words on it.  

Mark Twain's Birthplace

Bust of Mark Twain 

I guess we must like each other

When we left the "shrine", we walked across the road to an overlook of the lake.  There is an area around the entire lake probably forty feet above the water where there is no vegetation.  We were told that this was caused by the flood of 2008, the same flood we wrote about in our 2013 journal from Iowa.

Damage from 2008 Flood

We then drove a short way from the shrine to Florida, Missouri where there is another shrine showing where the house had been originally located.  There are a couple newer homes but most of the few buildings in the "town" are from the 1800s and in quite disrepair.

Florida, Missouri

Original Site of Birthplace

Back in the recreation area where the campground is, we drove to the marina.  On our way in we saw two deer beside the road who just watched us and kept on doing their thing.  Dinner, laundry and reading finished the day.

Deer