“Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi”

Aboard the Minnesota Centennial Showboat

St. Paul, MN

May 2, 2012 (Wed)

Join Southwest Tour & Travel for a new musical based on Mark Twain’s Classic, Life on the Mississippi.   This wonderful performance will be aboard the Minnesota Centennial Showboat docked on the Mississippi River at Harriet Island in St. Paul.  In this new musical Young Samuel Clemens leaves home to learn steamboat piloting in 1858 and begins the most joyous time of his life, navigating his way from boy to man and from Samuel Clemens to Mark Twain.  With original acoustic music, this stirring tale is fit for the whole family.

Sign up by: March 30, 2012

Cost:  $80.00pp

(afternoon luncheon and show, transportation, escort)

60 degrees what a change!

Today we celebrated a birthday, an anniversary and the fact that temperatures reached 90 degrees, 20 degrees above normal and tying an all-time record. The scenery got steadily more rolling as we moved from the foothills of the Appalachians into the Allegheny Mountains. We traveled 12 miles in West Virginia and then into Pennsylvania. We enjoyed seeing a covered bridge, hillside farms, Pennsylvania-style barns with louvers for windows, miles of forest, curving highways, and a steady, colorful array of blossoming trees and bushes. At the highest elevations, the leaves had not come out, but everything in Gettysburg tonight is very green. We have spent time at the Peace Monument within Gettysburg National Military Park and had a guided walk through the National Cemetery. Tonight we are free to enjoy some of the interesting restaurants within walking distance of the hotel.

Day 2

Sunshine, 86 degrees, blossoming trees (tulip magnolia, red bud, Bradford pear) and bushes (forsythia) gave us a beautiful day. The flat Illinois prairies of this morning became rolling hills with many trees by the time we checked into our Ohio hotel. We spent some quality time at the Indy 500, riding around the 2 1/2-mile track and looking at all of the displays in the museum. Trophies, racing memorabilia and cars from every era gave us plenty to look at. The Duesenberg was probably the favorite display.

Day 1

Lots of people, lots of luggage, and lots of anticipation today as we left on the Cherry Blossom tour. Even though much of the area is familiar to many of us, it is still exciting to see signs of changing seasons with some of the fields having been worked and with the grass getting greener the farther south we got. We found daffodils in bloom and trees leafing out by the time we arrived in Galesburg. We’ve gotten acquainted with people sitting around us, learned that the Mississippi flows east-west through the Quad Cities, and we’ve started looking at our lists of Broadway plays and maps of Manhattan, thinking about the days to come. With temperatures reaching a high of 67 degrees today (followed by a cool down when we ran into rain), we’re looking forward to wearing short sleeves.

Our John Deere packages are stowed away and we are anxious to get back to Minnesota to share our John Deere memories with our family and friends.

Day 3

A guide Rock Island Arsenal tour gave us interesting information on how this Arsenal has played an integral part in military history. A visit to the Isabel Bloom Studio where the make one of a kind sculptures and free time for shopping in LeClaire, IA made for a full day.

Day 2

This morning our first stop was at the John Deere Harvester plant where they make the huge JD combines. The one on display in the lobby was over $375,000, no one made a purchase order today! The JD World Headquarters was where we learned the history of John Deere and how the machinery has advanced over the years. Lunch at the John Deere Pavilion area gave us time to shop and get any John Deere souvenirs we might want. They even have John Deere underwear!!

This afternoon was a chance to enjoy the tasty treats part of this tour with a stop first at Boetje Foods for a sampling of their ground brown mustard, and next at a Chocolate Factory where she showed us how to make chocolate tulips, yummmmm….

A dinner theater presentation of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat rounded out this evening with great food and entertainment.

Day 1

We spent a pleasant day today getting to know our traveling companions and discussing the upcoming spring thaw. We learned about the flooding in the area in 2008 and hoped 2010 would be nothing like that.