We are quickly learning that an overwhelming majority of the time the thinner a road looks on a map the more fun it is to drive. This certainly applies for Missouri. We jumped off of interstate 44 in Lebanon, Missouri and headed south on Route 5. Before too long we were seeing cows. Tons of cows. I wasn’t counting, but I’d wager that we saw more than 1,000 cows in various grazing fields during our day of driving. And if we weren’t seeing cows, then we were seeing hills, like this one:

We started referring to these types of hills as the roller coasters of southern Missouri. Lots and lots of fun to drive. We had the radio turned up loud and all of the windows down. 80 degrees, sunny and no humidity - a great day for a drive through the country side. 

Missouri uses letters for some of their smaller roads. We found this one to be particularly amusing.

We spent the night at a trail head in the Hercules-Glades Wilderness area of the Mark Twain National Forest. There are large rolling fields of grass directly adjacent to steep rocky hills with areas of dense forest. The diversity keeps you on your toes. When we were getting ready for bed we heard wolves howling off in the distance.

And last but not least, here’s a video capturing one of the roller coasters of southern Missouri. Warning, this may cause motion sickness. We taped this while driving back to the main road after stopping at a public access site for a break from driving. This is the only stretch of dirt road that we’ve driven on for our whole trip.