Forever Free

So…you haven’t heard from me for a while because we have been in remote - wifi cannot be found for miles - places this past week!  Not been the best week to say the least.  We left Colorado last Tuesday after meeting with my cousin Nic Dial.  Great to catch up with him and have one final goodbye to CO.  From there we headed east on I-70 through FLAT FLAT eastern Colorado and western Kansas.  Not a real exciting drive, but it was OK because driving through the mountains in Harvi to get back to Denver was enough excitement for one day for all of us!!

We stopped in Russell, Kansas late in the evening at a place just off the interstate that looked like it had seen better days.  The big attraction surrounding it was an “oil well museum” which in reality looked like a bunch of old rusty oil rig pieces strewn about with tall grass all around - ha!  Needless to say we did not do any exploring of the “museum.”  The mosquitos (does that word have an “e”??) were quite thick and the reality of the US heatwave really hit us.  The cool Colorado mornings and evenings suddenly were like a special paradise we missed desperately…

Wednesday we headed out of Kansas to Missouri.  We had schedule a couple of nights at some campgrounds there hoping to see some nice trails and maybe do a river float.  Well we found out very quickly the Missouri State Park system does not believe in keeping their trails maintained and that ticks should be their state “insect” (if that is what ticks are considered).  Dirk and I ventured off on a two mile hike (Lexi being much wiser than us opted out) with Binx when we reached our first destination (Knob Noster state park…we should have known from the name what we were getting into!) and found ourselves on a muddy overgrown trail that seemed to be seven miles instead of two.  The heat was overwhelming to all us - especially Binx with his thick fur coat.  Never was I so happy to see the end of the trail when we finally made our way to the end.  But that was only the beginning of the fun.  I soon found out that the woods had given us all a gift…a nice covering of all types of TICKS - YUCKKKK!  As I was lying on the vinyl floor in our RV recovering from the sauna walk I began to pick some of the mud from my legs and realized all those dark specs were not mud but instead disgusting blood sucking ticks that had already dived suckers first into my legs…seems these ticks were very thirsty and did not wait to find their way to my head!  Mortified, Lexi was beside herself as she pictured herself being covered by these blood thirsty pests as she slept that night since both Binx and I were lying near her pullout bed.  About and hour later and what seemed like a million ticks later, we felt like we had picked ourselves clean from the attack.  Needless to say, I did not wander off of the roads the next morning when I walked Binx. 

From there we headed to Meramac State Park hoping for a better experience only to find a pretty similar situation.  We did try to take a river float but found after riding (really mostly pushing) our bikes up a very large hill that we missed the last launch time by 30 minutes.  By this time we decided rolling into Indiana a day early looked pretty darn good so we loaded up and headed east…glad to leave the State of Missouri goodbye!!

We arrived at the Tucker’s last night around 10:30 pm glad to be in familiar territory and surrounded by smiling family faces.  Even Binx seemed to sense he was “home” once we arrived!  We will be hanging out here for a week.  Dirk and I will be sharing our story briefly tomorrow at a church nearby.  We look forward to seeing family and celebrating our Nation’s birthday with a big firework show next weekend. 

In the middle of all this crazy heat insect ridden week, I reread the book “The Shack”…if you haven’t had a chance to read this book I would recommend it.  So many interesting and deep lessons to learn.  God certainly used it again to speak to my heart in many ways. 

Will update again soon…until then love to all!
Sherry