Twice before in our travels we attempted to visit the Horseshoe Pitchers Hall of Fame and Museum. We thought that the third time would be the charm and we’d get in. Nope, it’s three strikes and you’re out! It was closed.

Fortunately, that gave us more time to spend at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. It is the location of a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished along the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to Florida between 900 AD and 1300 AD.

We were fortunate to come on a day when the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center was open. It is full of dioramas, maps, murals, archeological artifacts and much more. After the center closed, we climbed up Monks Mound…the biggest mound in Cahokia. What a view!

According to the archeologists, there was a thriving culture and Cahokia had a bigger population than London or Paris at the time. It makes one wonder whether there were any other great civilizations lost to time. Maybe that is where the legend of Atlantis comes from.