We are HUGE fans of the writings of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)! His book, Roughing It, written in 1872 is a side-splitting comedic recounting of Twain’s misadventures in the Wild West.   Just think about his “River Novels”-the hair raising and hilarious tales told in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn! Have you wondered about the setting for those childhood stories of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and others? That setting is Hannibal, Missouri!   Twain was deeply connected and devoted to the Mississippi River. We recommend reading his book, Life on the Mississippi, written in 1883.  His love for the river began when he was a boy in…

Shhhh…we hesitate to blog about St. Genevieve, Missouri-what some call the best example of French Colonial architecture in the hemisphere! You see, the whole town is slated to become a National Historic Park and crowds haven’t discovered it yet! We debated about whether it is fair to keep this charmingly romantic and historic town to ourselves. An hour south of St. Louis,  St. Genevieve is the oldest town in Missouri and was founded by French Canadian fur trappers between 1722 and 1749. Officially, St, Genevieve became a town in 1735 and was the first organized European settlement west of the Mississippi in Missouri. Jacques-Nicholas Bellin’s map of 1755 showed the Kaskaskia native…