In less than three full days, I drove more than 1,000 miles (1,038 to be exact) between Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and (briefly) Wisconsin. The original goal was to visit some old familiar sites from my childhood, stop by the hospital where my brother was born early, then take some time to visit the presidential graves/homes/libraries of Herbert Hoover in Iowa and Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. But in making a trip like this, I also felt compelled to wander, to make my way along the edges of the Mississippi River, as close as I could stay to it for as long as I could. These were the best images of that experience, starting in Hannibal, Missouri, the childhood home of Mark Twain (aka, Samuel Clemens).
