Having a blast in MO

It's been a great month since school let out, filled with friends old and new. Some we drove over a thousand miles to see, some drove twice that distance to see us, and some live right here in town. And on the fourth our yard was filled with the lot of them as we shot off fireworks worthy of a small city. It was quite the Rockwellian occasion: our table laden with burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, watermelon, fragrant homebaked rosemary bread, chocolate cake and red, white and blueberry starspangled shortbread; kids catching frogs, sunfish, perch and bass in our pond; friend meeting neighbor; chigger meeting ankle before the sky above us ruptured in sound and color.
The day before we canoed the Missouri River (finally) between Rocheport and Huntsdale with longtime friends from Massachusetts. The river is amazingly undeveloped and we were the sole partakers of its wild beauty. Apart from the I-70 bridge we floated under (to the sounds of roaring 18 wheelers' envious horn blasts) there was no evidence of civilization. It was not hard to imagine ourselves viewing the banks and bluffs we passed through the lens of Lewis and Clark or the native Americans whose heiroglyphics are still visible on the rock face. A brush (literally) with poison ivy was defused by a rinse in a nearby waterfall after we scrambled up a rocky bank to investigate a cave. Happily smeared with Missouri dirt, we stopped for a supper of bread and cheese atop a scenic bluff and a round of ice cream cones at the Rocheport General Store. As the sun lowered over the hills, we headed home with tired limbs, full tummies and fuller hearts. Welcome to our chunk of Missouri.