No offense to my friends and relatives in Iowa, but I escaped to Missouri when I was 3. Actually Dad, an Iowa Hawkeye boy graduated from college on his WW 2 GI bill and took me. His decision may have been influenced by my Mother a Mo girl.
Dad's day job was an Engineer for the DOD US Army. He bought a 200 acre farm and we were raised like it was the heart of the depression. We raised most everything we ate, Mom canned more food than Libbys.
I guess our parents were keeping us occupied and out of trouble. we thought we were poor farm kids. Dad sure pulled the wool over our eyes. My brother and I were farm labor, dad pocketed the money. Later in life after Dad sold the farm and moved to town he still cut wood for his fireplace insert in a new home. But when he bought a new CJ5 or his Jeep J10 golden eagle truck he just paid cash. A foreign concept to my little brother and I. Took us a while to figure out he did not have payments.
That lifestyle allowed us to learn how to work, work faster so we had hunting, fishing, horseback time and all the rest we wanted to do. We lived close to an army base but past the strip it was all rural.
A spring fed river ran along the highway on the other side of our tall bluffs in front of Dad's farm. We lived on top of the Mountain. There was another river about a quarter of a mile north where the spring fed river connected to it. I learned to fly fish for trout by walking across the road. I would get up early or stay late feeding mosquitos catching Small mouth bass on the river.
My maternal grandpa and 3 uncles had farms on that river. It was pretty easy to put in and do a float trip and get picked up at a relatives farm.
It was home, it gave us our introduction to life, taught us how to hunt, fish and respect the land and game. It is a land of 10 million memories.
The Mo Ozarks are a thing of beauty, hardwood and pine forests. Many cave to explore, Rivers everywhere. Great fishing, was in my boat and watched my ex FIL reel in a 55 LB Flathead at the lake of the Ozarks.
I've camped many places in the Ozarks, most are like stepping back in time, some places seem to have missed mans hand.
Retired to KS, it is a nice place, gun laws are similar, good laid back folks. But they don't have spring fed rivers curling and bubbling down hill hiding trout or small mouth. Valleys that seem to smoke opening day of Turkey season as the sun hits and the mist rises off the clear water. One can see a deer here for a rite fur piece. In places half way to Colorado.
I'd shoot one of those but it'd take a week to walk to it and 2 weeks to drag it out.
