POSTCARD: From Missouri

Postcard from the Ozarks | biblio-style.com

 We’re getting to the time of year that always gives me a genuine sense of weird anxiety. The end of the summer, when it feels like everyone is pushing the fast-forward button to fall and all the cozy vibes, pumpkin spice latte, fall scents bullshit makes me feel like a fall loving collective is personally taking summer away from me. It makes me mad and so to compensate, I get preachy and self righteous about enjoying the now and “let August be August” when really I should just put my phone down and ignore social media. That’s where the fast-forward button lives, I think. Man, it seems so logical when I write it down. 


Anyway, jumping off my annual soapbox, we’re in the Ozarks and I’ve got my eyes wide-open for heroin slinging church boats, and Jason Bateman, and all the other purported criminal activity. Do you watch Ozark? So good, hopefully so unrealistic. 


Money Can't Buy Happiness, Granby CO | biblio-style.com


Seriously though, we’re meeting up with my best friends and I am here to remind you once more - we love meeting up with people from home in locations that are far from home. Two of the girls live in Grand Rapids, and our other friend lives in Colorado, so the Ozarks is a nice in-between meeting spot, complete with a beach because duh. I remember talking about this trip earlier this year and being a little sad that I’d probably miss it. Stephy-Girl reminded me on the fly this week that they’d be there this weekend and I just popped that address in my GPS and it turns out it was only a 2-day drive, right in the direction we’re headed anyway. Destiny? I think so. 


Leaving Colorado was tough though. I think we loved it most of all. Colorado has everything. Mountains, deserts, verdant valleys, rivers, lakes. We spent a week there, longer than we’ve spent anywhere else, and I feel like I was converted into a Colorado missionary, ready to travel the world with the gospel. I will happily share the good news of beautiful landscapes and hazy mountains and 11,000’ peaks with snow in August. 


Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, CO | biblio-style.com

Colorado Skyline | biblio-style.com

Curecanti National Recreation Area | biblio-style.com

On our last day in Colorado, we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s one of the few parks we needed to make reservations in advance to drive through, and our time slot was 8-10am so we were up early. And I’m so glad! I was just telling Ryan earlier that morning how weird it was that we were all over the place and never saw anything more exotic than some deer and a bison. I expected bears! Mooses! Rattlesnakes (but not sorry we missed those). Not five minutes into the park, two moose cross the street in front of us and we found a big moose snacking on some breakfast on the side of the road. 


Rocky Mountain National Park | biblio-style.com

Rocky Mountain National Park | biblio-style.com


Take me home! I saw what I came to see!


Then we spent the next two days driving across Kansas and Missouri, which honestly doesn’t have much to see outside of a million miles of corn fields and a surprising number of random billboards with paintings of a white man that I suppose is Jesus. Jesus blessing the cornfields. Jesus with all caps captions “JESUS LOVES YOU”. Jesus next to an endorsement for Trump. 


Listen. I’ll save my thoughts for Ryan because you probably don’t come here for my politics, yet he is contractually obligated, but I’ll just say that the last one made me laugh and laugh and laugh. 


***


You may have noticed that we’re back in the mid-west and it’s intentional. We’re homeward bound for a couple of weeks to see family, partake in a COVID delayed wedding, and celebrate Ryan’s and Duke’s birthdays, and if you ask Duke, watch PJ Masks. So after this visit in the Ozarks, we’ll be taking the route north. 


In the meantime though, my best friends are here and even though it’s only 8:13am, I already hear a jetski on the water, so I will be (getting preaching) living in the NOW, which is still summer. 


I promise, that’s a joke. Enjoy your pumpkin spices!


Lake of the Ozarks, MO | biblio-style.com







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