Dear friends and family,

Day 8 of our road trip started in a movie-like way. Bill, the kids and I were kidnapped by a giant unidentified animal, half black, half orange, at a place where we stopped for breakfast. See the evidence in the picture below. By now you probably know that we escaped. Yay!

We soon forgot about the scare and continued our trip. Instead of driving all the way to Chicago, which was our original plan, we decided to make a to stop at Springfield here in Illinois, where we are spending the night. Before arriving here we stopped at Mark Twain‘s house in Hannibal. The smallest of these two houses is where he spent his childhood.

The little house is now a museum where you can see some of the objects from when Twain was a boy living in poverty. I discovered that Twain and I had 2 things in common: one, we slept on an uncomfortable mattress in our childhood. Two, if we wanted to go pee pee at night he had to use a bassinet that had to be placed close to the bed, but ideally under the bed to avoid accidents. Dios mio! Sometimes I forget about these things. It is good to remember these details because they make me feel grateful for comfy mattresses, toilettes, and also toilette paper. Let’s not take these things for granted 🙂

Below is Becky Thatcher’s home. See the following closeup picture to find out who she was.

The last thing that I want to report is our stop at an antique clock shop in Hannibal. There we found the most unfriendly person of this trip. The lady was so grumpy that it was funny. She did all the right things to make sure that nobody bought a clock. What a fascinating character! She didn’t enjoy children, so she kept an eye on Natalie and Diego, specially on Diego, who was very curious about how those clocks worked. But we didn’t get mad at her. We just thought that she needed to go across the street and have some ice cream. We did, it and it was delicious!

So now we are at the hotel, getting ready for bed. Tomorrow will be so exciting! We will be in Chicago with Grandma Joan and Tia Marguerite. I will also see my dear friend Acela. Looking forward to it!

Elsita 🙂