"Today is a Good Day to Drive!" .....Van-Go

  We left our dirtroad camp after completing our loop trail through the forest and went straight to DQ for a blizzard! Today is a good day to drive! Jefferson City is the capitol city of Missouri. See the capitol dome. Love those steel bridges. Irrigated fields and corn fields. And hay bales. We drove into Moberly, MO where Crystal's Mom lives. We had a nice visit. We stopped at Lancaster Lake Park for lunch. And then into Iowa! We found a nice field just west of Unionville to pull into just after sunset. In the morning we were visited by a gaggle of turkey with their young! We followed the scenic byway to West DesMoines and drove straight to the Apple store in the Jordan Creek mall. Kathy had two sessions on Aperture Photo and Will got the IPhone taken care of by getting us a replacement phone; now we can hear again on the phone!

As we entered the national forest on MO14 we pulled in the first dirt road we found; it dead ended in private property so we turned around and went back out and across the street in that dirt road. What a find!! It was a dead end road about two miles long with nothing on it!

Bradleyville is a small town with it's own post office! And a cute little shop that makes its own soaps and lotions; Will waited outside watching the hummingbirds while Kathy went in to check it out.  She was rewarded with a free bar of honeysuckle soap. Leaving town we found an escaped cow on the wrong side of the fence! what beautiful rolling hills there are in Missouri. Ava is another small town, but it has its own family theatre and a new cultural center.

This was our night spot; we watched our nightly movie, Gorillas in the Mist before going to sleep. Beautiful wisteria. Will got up first thing and cooked up a batch of chicken thighs.  While shopping yesterday Will and gotten a bag and Kathy had gotten a bag so back at the van..."Oh we have two bags of chicken!!" We decided to take a morning hike.  We jumped over logs and tripped over stones, but mostly the walk was really beautiful. We thought this outgrowth looked like a rhino head; what do you think? Look at this piece of history; an old water trough; notice how the tree on the left grew around the boards!! We found an old wall; wonder why they built a wall here? Georgia O'Keefe Sky. What a great twisted old tree. Some of the walk was flat across a meadow; we even saw a cactus and some pretty blue flowers. Walking in the shade of the forest on this 90 degree day was enjoyable and we got our exercise too! Back at our night spot. Heading toward Bradleyville to send off s