After four straight weeks of 6-day workweeks at my day job, I was due for an unplugged weekend. My boyfriend and I decided to escape into St. Joe State Park in Park Hills, Missouri to pitch our tent and hide in the woods for a day or two.
St. Joe State Park is one of the only parks in Missouri where ATVs are welcome (in approved areas only). My family had a three-wheeler when I was a kid, but my dad never wanted me to drive it. As a result, I’d never driven an ATV.
MilliGFunk on a Four Wheeler, photo Tony
My boyfriend’s experience with ATVs is quite the opposite. Half of his wardrobe bears Fox Racing logos, and he spent his teenage years racing four wheelers and dirt bikes. There is no shortage of stories of him flying high through the air on four wheelers, and I’ve still not managed to tally of the number of broken bones he’s accrued over the years.
Peaceful Campsite
I’ve always considered the sounds made by revving engines to be testosteronic and over-hyped, so waking up to the sound of boys revving their dirt bikes outside our tent was a new and not entirely welcomed experience for me.
Always willing to give something one try, I decided to give four-wheeling a chance. I killed the engine repeatedly, and probably didn’t exceed 25 miles per hour all day long. I didn’t die though, and truth be told, I had a pretty good time. Besides that, I look kind of bad ass driving this thing, don’t I?
Riding into the sunset, photo by Tony
The moral of the story is to get brave and try something new, even if it’s something you never before thought you’d enjoy. Getting our minds out of their regular ruts is refreshing, and removing ourselves from comfort zones keeps us viewing the world from new perspectives.
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St. Joe State Park also has a nice, asphalt bicycle trail, which I ride with some frequency and blogged about in 2009.
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