After the moving Sunday night (the 22nd) we went back to the cabin and started packing and getting ready to leave for St. Louis.  It was raining Monday morning, had started in the night, and it rained almost all the way to St. Louis.

When we talked to the glass blower on Saturday I noticed he had a lot of geodes around his place.  I asked him about them and told him was of the merchants had told me they could be found around the river but I never found any.  He said that the best areas to go is where there is a creek entering the river.  The many he had he said that he got after a flood sometime in the 90's.  We found a place that was suppose to have them in Hamilton, just down the road from Nauvoo, so were going to stop there on our way.  It was about 9:00 am so I called to see if they were open yet.  It was called Nick's Geodes.  When he answered and I asked if they were open he hesitated a bit and sorta said yes.  I told him we were going by and wanted to check out the geodes at his place.  He informed me that his "place" was a dig site and since it was raining the digging would be pretty messy and dirty.  So much for that idea.  The glass blower gave us a couple of little ones and when Jim gets around to opening them I'll post pictures.

So the car started giving us some screaming sound from the belts Monday morning.  We had them all changed before we left and apparently they were a little loose and needed to be tightened. At least that's what Jim said.  It was only for a little bit so we went on our way.  We didn't get any geodes, darn but we did stop in Hannibal. MO to find the pottery shop.  Oh, and we discovered that Hannibal is the home of Mark Twain!

We didn't go on any tour.  We did find the pottery shop and got to go on a tour of the shop.  It was interesting and fun and I spent TOO MUCH money there!!!

We decided to follow the signs to the Mark Twain Cave.  When we got there we found out it would cost us $30 to take a tour in the cave.  We weren't willing to spend that much and we really didn't have time to take the tour. 

By the time we got to St. Louis it had stopped raining and cleared up but was very windy.  We got to see The Arch of St. Louis - "The Archway to the West", but were to late to go up in it. 

 

 

 There is a lot of construction going on in the area because they are getting ready for their 100 years celebration.  If I remember right it is going to be this fall.  Of course, I picked up the wrong flyer which doesn't have details about the arch but rather how much it costs to go on the journey to the top or take a riverboat cruise, and all that kind of information.  The arch is the largest man made structure in the USA.  It is 630 feet high.  The space needle in Seattle is 605. 
   It only costs $10 to go to the top and we would have done it if we had gotten there earlier.  Spent too much time in Hannable!