Advertisement
Published: August 1st 2015
Edit Blog Post
Road trips are first and foremost about road food—thus, our first stop was 120 miles west of Columbus in Richmond, Ind. Richmond is the home of Earlham College, but more importantly of Square Donuts of Richmond! It is Michael’s birthday today and to celebrate we stopped off at his favorite donut place while he was at Earlham. (Sorry Michael, these do not mail well.) Check out these tasty little bricks of flour, fat, and sugar—delicious. (Note: They are low sodium!)
Of course, you also have to have your own road food along. We made a stop at Trader Joe’s before departing and, well, take a look. How on earth did we manage to walk out of there without a single vegetable or fruit? At least we hit some of the basic food groups—chocolate, nuts, cookies…opps, forgot the chips.
We have picked up our third road tripper in West Lafayette, Indiana, Marcia’s mom and my favorite mother-in-law, Louise, and are headed west. If I am lucky the ladies will let me make a quick stop at XXX Hamburgers (
www.triplexxxfamilyresturaunt.com) for a burger and a root beer before we head to Hannibal, MO.
First stop out of West Lafayette was,
Snack loading!
Marcia and her mom with supplies! well, Champaign, Illinois to visit the first home Marcia and I owned. It is not on the historic register and you have to search a bit to find 1210 N. Market Street, but it still stands and you will see in the photo. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the neighborhood is gone--really, gone. But the historic significance of this location is that it is the place where Marcia helped me break my television addiction by, in 1980, giving our television away to a neighbor (long story, ask me sometime). I have been broadcast TV free since then but do lapse whenever in hotel rooms, friends houses, restaurants, well, anyplace where there is a television. So you might want to add this location to your itinerary.
Then the long drive to the Mississippi River and Hannibal, MO. This was our first real tourist spot at the two Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, called home during his boyhood. We checked out the statue of Huck and Tom but the real treat was Jim's Journey (www.jimsjourney.org) in which Faye Dant has loving created a tribute to the African Americans in Twain's work. It is only open Friday through Sunday, but it
Jim's Journey
Here is Faye Dant, the driving force behind Jim's Journey. is full of memorabilia from Hannibal and information about Clemens' relationship with African Americans. If you are lucky Faye will be there to give you a tour.
After dinner we thought we would wander down the Mississippi on State Route 79 before heading west--smart move. We stumbled upon the ghost town of Ilasco, MO, 4 miles south of Hannibal. A small monument marks the contribution of some 2,000 Southern and Eastern European immigrants who arrived at the turn of the century to provide labor for the new cement plant. A plant that provided cement for the Panama Canal and numerous other major projects in the US. Now abandoned, the old cement jail still stands (with a plaque donated by the family of a former Slovak inmate) and a old store and tavern.
Hope you enjoy the photos, check below for more. Tomorrow will be a big day with some pretty cool Kansas sites...see you then.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.294s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 22; qc: 72; dbt: 0.085s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb