Making a Road Trip out of it

I left Heifer Ranch on Friday. I had been there for over 3 months, which is a very long time for me to be in any one location or job, consistently, since I graduated college. I had done 3 months in the same apartment, but I had left on tour a few times while I was living there. No wonder I was getting antsy.

I was driving up to Columbia, MO, to visit a friend that I hadn't seen since high school. We had kept in touch consistently, using only phone conversations and phone messages. We became facebook friends and knew each other's email addresses, but we never resorted to electronic communication. We never resorted to written correspondence, either. It was a weird way to keep up a friendship, in this modern age, but it was unique, and it lasted.

So, being in the same time zone, and with a free chunk of time before my next job, I decided to drop in and visit. That meant an 8-hour drive up from Arkansas to Missouri (which is only the next state up). But an 8-hour drive is nothing compared to the epic 20+ hour drive from Philadelphia to across the Mississippi.

So I did the 8-hour drive in one day, packing all of my belongings on Friday morning (the standard 1-hour-pack-everything-I-own routine), said goodbye to a life of daily adventures, and hit the road. There were plenty of road-trip-esque attractions along the way (Super deep caves! Ozark Historical Museum! Lake Vacationstop!) that I rolled on by.

I was preoccupied by the landscape, watching the rolling Ouachita Mountains turn into the jagged Ozarks, which rolled into long plains before retreating back into more jagged Ozarks. I had to stop for gas, and figured a good place would be Springfield, MO, home of the flagship store of Bass Pro Shops, an outdoor store.


This particular Bass Pro Shop was their flagship store, and included supersized versions of everything they sold. A couple nascar racecars were on display. Their bait and tackle section included full-sized fishing boats, boat trailers, and even vehicles to pull them. If you wandered through the outdoor section long enough, you ended up in their hunting section. Good thing you passed the food court, where you could pick up a snack for the long trek back.

The place was decorated with hunting trophies, with stuffed deer heads coming out of every bit of wall space. They set up dioramas of bucolic outdoor scenes, complete with stuffed animals. Like, taxidermy. Not cute stuffed animals, but cute, stuffed animals (if you don't know the difference, I recommend learning the fine points of English grammar).


The highlight of the place, though, was the live alligator. Hard to beat.


Revitalized for the long drive, I headed out. I stopped briefly in Jefferson City for dinner and a glimpse of their beautiful State Capitol building, with beautiful views over the huge Missouri River right behind it.


I rolled on in to Columbia not too long after, and concluded my small first leg of another move. Eight hours is an easy drive, compared to what's to come next week.