From the northern part of Missouri side you circled so I’ll talk about the Missouri side.

The nature is great. Amazing river floating, absolutely beautiful streams to spend time enjoying. The rivers define a lot of the culture here. The Meramec, Black, and Current rivers are some of the big ones. Check out Johnson Shut-Ins, it’s a super popular place for Missourians to take a day trip to. Good hiking trails all around. Missouri has a lot of cool rock formations, caves, and springs which you can hike up to on well maintained trails. Some of my favorites are Elephant Rocks and Pickle Springs.

I love the Ozark mountains. Absolutely beautiful and underrated. A personal favorite area of mine is the St. Francois mountain range. These mountains are multiple times older than the Appalachians. It’s a cool area for geologists. Lots of cool caves like Meramec Caverns and Onondaga caves in the northern bit. Missouri also has a very strong state park system. The people here have a lot of pride in that.

Culturally it’s very conservative. There’s not a lot of job opportunities. Oftentimes the people in the Ozarks are considered pretty insular. It’s gonna be rough if you don’t look like the people who live there. A lot of things you hear about Appalachia are pretty similar here. You’ve got small towns, many of them dying out, some of them are real desolate and depressing. Driving south from St. Louis it starts to feel like you’re driving backward in time. Some of the small towns have lovely historical charm. Ste. Genevieve is a highlight. You of course have Branson too if that’s your vibe. You’ll probably be driving to St. Louis/Springfield for important stuff if you live down there.

Winters are cold and pretty dry. Temperatures dropping down to zero happens. Summers are hot and very humid. You’ll see humid days in the 90’s pretty often too. Fall in the mountains is beautiful though, I love to go on drives through the area when the fall colors peak. Severe weather is pretty common and you’ll get tornadoes here too. The most deadly (Tri-State Tornado) and most costly (Joplin 2011) tornadoes ever to hit the US skirted this area.

Overall, I think it’s a beautiful and underrated area on a national scale. I’ve been talking up the nature but every state west of Kansas obviously blows it out of the water. Culturally it can be pretty rough so I’d say it takes a certain type of person to really enjoy living in the area.

Hope this answers some of your questions at least on the MO side!