After a sweaty night at the Flying J, we drove through Oklahoma, which was greener than Texas with vast it’s-a-boy-blue skies and windy hills.
When we arrived at Flat Rock Campground near Muskogee, Oklahoma, it was calm and quiet. Clusters of Canadian geese floated on the lake. Deer grazed on the lawn behind the trailer. The fireflies came out at dusk and twinkled in the low-hanging branches of trees. The campsite was lovely and we slept soundly.
Our next stop was Hannibal, Missouri. We stayed at the Mark Twain Cave Campground. The lot was busy and crowded with huge campers. Our T@B was the tiniest trailer in the park, and our site neighbor—a distinguished gentleman with an enormous RV featuring four slide-outs and an outdoor TV—got a big kick out of watching Oscar cautiously back-in to our site.
We spent two nights in Hannibal. We took a riverboat cruise and learned about barges and the Mississippi River, and we completed the walking tour of Tom Sawyer’s boyhood homes. The tour concluded at the Mark Twain Museum which had interactive exhibits for children and, upstairs, the original Norman Rockwell paintings for Tom Sawyer.
Throughout the town, in shops and restaurants and sides of buildings, there are quotes by the famous writer. After 150+ years, Mark Twain’s insights are still wise and wonderful.
Here’s a quote that seems fitting for most adventures:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
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