"The best time to visit Osage Beach is now until the 31st of September"

Home... I am finally at home for an extended period of time. My mom flew down to Frisco on Saturday. She was pretty exhausted, but we went to lunch and the FC Dallas game (which we won in stoppage game, putting us in first place in the west and tied for first overall). I think that she had a good time. We went to the game with Brian, so I think that was weird for her... but that's alright. We had a good time. She is definitely not used to the heat though. She just looked exhausted the whole time. I was able to tell her about the stuff I did during the game and she met the people that I work with. The game was really exciting too. A PK and a goal after 90 minutes... what more can you ask for?

Then on Sunday, I started packing up all of my stuff... I hope Kilee enjoys having her room back. My mom said that it wasn't any different than me at home with all the mess in the room, but I would say it was cluttered, but it's not like it was my space and I could put stuff "away". I hope the Herlin's didn't mind that it was a bit messy. It's all good though. I packed everything up pretty quickly. We were going to go to church, but since church was at 2, then we wouldn't be leaving until like 6pm and that would be a little late to start a road trip, and also, it was good just to leave. So we packed up the car and I said goodbye to the Herlins. It was really sad. I'm going to miss them. They are really good people and they're so fun. I had a really good summer, and I am really lucky to have been able to live with them. We had fun, it was a great location for me to go to work, and I think that everything worked out well. I'm sure Krista is going to miss me the most, but at least she'll have phase 10 to remember me by... I'm sure I'll make it back down to Frisco to visit at some point. I will have to hone my ping pong playing skills and show Zach and thing or two though... and the Pistons better beat the Mavs every time they meet... those are my only requirements for when I go back... haha.

Once I left, the road trip began. We only went a few hours on Sunday because I planned on going to Broken Bow, OK, which was only like 3.5 hours away. It looked like a fun place to go. There we went canoeing and swimming and whatnot. We were speedy gonzales' on the canoe trip though... it was 4 miles and was supposed to take like 4 hours going through the rapids and such, but it only took us like 1.5 hours, so when we got back to the end spot, I was like mom, we're at the end, we should just chill here for a minute and hang out in the river. (It was like 11:00 and no other canoes or kayaks were in sight). So we just chilled for a half an hour and then beached and they asked us if we were practicing for the Olympic trials or if someone was chasing us down the river. It was pretty amusing. We fumbled through the rapids and got stuck a couple times and I got out of the canoe and moved us past the rocks... I'm sure we looked pretty amateurish. The river was really pretty and fun. We wanted them to drop us off again at the launch point and then do it again since we were so speedy... they were taking the next group when we returned... I guess we went pretty fast because we didn't have our cooler of beer weighing us down... or drinking it and not being able to navigate quite well. Well, whatever the reason, the trip was pretty fun.

So we headed out to Lake of the Ozarks, MO after our morning in Broken Bow. We stopped at a dam and little things also, but it was pretty hot and we were pretty content just to stay in the air conditioned car, even though we think the air conditioned car has issues... a lake developed in the passenger side floor and the backseat floor and soaked our oklahoma and arkansas map, so we just kind of guessed which roads went where. It was kind of annoying, but looking outside the fact, pretty comical. My mom was freaking out at like 9 pm when it was dark and we didn't have a hotel to stay in and the final destination wasn't in sight. I don't think she really gets the "road trip" spirit, but that's alright. We picked a hotel that we arrived at that was about 10 miles shy of where I really wanted to stay, but it worked out all right because it was pretty close to "HaHa Tonka State Park" and Bridal Cave, so we did those touristy things. It was weird how warm the water was there to us. It was like bath water rather than lake water. At the state park, we saw some castle ruins which was pretty cool. I didn't know that there were castles in the US. Now when I say that I want a castle, it is really a possibility. I'll just build myself a castle when I grow up. It was a fun place to be. We then took the most random "drive" because I was like let's see if we can go around the top of Lake of the Ozarks. So we ended up at the dead end road looking at the lake and a marina... then out of nowhere a guy on a golf cart asked us if we were lost... he was like "you are a little far from Michigan aren't you?" Anyway, he told us which way to go, and the roads we went on were really dirt and had only bales of hay and some lone tractors and farm equipment... My mom was like, we are going to get lost in the middle of nowhere in Missouri and never make it out of here. We had over a half a tank of gas, and I knew she was still really worried. She has no faith in random strangers. People who live in the middle of nowhere are a lot nicer than people in Detroit suburbia. For sure. We finally made it to road "W", but we had wanted "W-3" but we ended up hitting "Y" and whatever other letter of the alphabet we needed. We then went to the "spot to see" of Bagnell Dam, and it wasn't even anything. It looked all closed down like the boat trips and everything... I don't know if it was just because it was a little late, but it seemed like they would have evening cruises to make some serious cash and the whole pier was deserted... Well anyway, we had a good time. We ended up coming home a bit early (my mom's not the road trip type and we couldn't come up with anything cool to do in Illinois) So I'm home and trying to find a part time job and get my car fixed because it is seriously looking like Lake Michigan now. I should take a picture... That'll be on my to-do list.