Monday, November 15th., 2021…... We got up at 2:30am. The drive up
to PDX (Portland) was made with no problems. We parked again in the long-term
lot and headed to check-in. (Yes, I closed the windows and locked the truck
this time!) Cathye used Alaska Airlines miles to get us business class flights
both coming and going. I love the extra legroom! On these flights, we found we
get premium class treatment with alcohol included. Yay! It was a 31- minute
flight to SEA (Seattle) and then a 4-hour flight to STL (St. Louis), but it was
ok. We took the shuttle to the car rentals. This time, I took the car rental duty
and we got on the shuttle to the Emerald Aisle at National and we picked out a
Nissan Kick (suv). We actually enjoyed it. Our cars do not have the lane
detection and proximity warnings nor the auto dim/bright features that this car
had! Nice! Our first stop was to the local Steak & Shake for a quick burger
meal. Then we made the 2 ½ hour drive - the last part being gravel roads - to
Vienna for the first stop. This was at Cathye’s son Michael and his wife
Crystal’s home there. Her two nephews (Terry & Gary) and their family had
driven over to be there for a visit. It was nice. I keep meeting relations all
around the country! We had a long day, so
it was nice to finally call it a night.
Tuesday, November 16th., 2021…... We slept in a bit this morning. Later, Crystal had made us an overnight-crockpot-breakfast, which was delicious! Then we went out and got a tour of their place. They have 23 acres, most of it wooded, with access to Clifty Creek, which they say has a nice swimming hole in the summer! All of it was very nice. Then they drove us Clifty Creek Park so we could hike to the natural bridge there. We didn’t make it quite to that point because it was a downhill hike – which we knew we had to go back up! – so we headed back and then looked at it online. Haha! Here's the picture of the bridge we saw...
And here's the picture from the online website.....
We would have liked to see it. Maybe next time. Cathye was a bit sore the next morning so I’m glad we didn’t go much farther. We also stopped at the cousin’s farm to see their animals…
Later, after we were back home and packed up, we then followed them to lunch at Pappo’s Pizza. It was right on I44 and we will go back again if/when we are in that area.
We drove down the road a bit and went to visit Uranus! Yep, I wrote it right! We enjoyed Uranus. They specialize in packing fudge in Uranus! Plus, a lot of funny gag items, including a jail! We all got on the ‘wanted’ posters. We thought it was funny that they had one for McCracken, which is Cathye’s last name! So, we switched wanted posters!
I didn’t find a hat I liked, so I bought a Uranus
Fire Dept. t-shirt:
We said our goodbyes and headed on toward Branson. I did a detour in Springfield to show Cathye the Bass Pro Shop’s ‘Mother Ship’. This store sits on several city blocks and she was duly impressed!
We continued on to the ticket counter to get our ticket package, which included the hotel reservation confirmation. We managed to extend our hotel stay one extra night like we wanted. The plan was to add one or two more shows on Friday and then do Silver Dollar City on Saturday before heading back to STL. We wanted to add “Jesus’ to our list but they wouldn’t do it at the ticket place unless we agreed to do a VRBO/BnB ‘open house’ sales pitch. No Way! So, we drove to the hotel and went online and booked it directly with the Sight and Sound Theater. I even got my pick of seats! Once we got settled in our room at the Fall Creek Inn, we walked next door to their restaurant and had dinner. This is one of two places in the area that is famous for their ‘tossed or throwed’ rolls! The meal was good. We had margaritas and I had chicken fried steak and she had coconut shrimp and we left full and happy, despite the earlier sales pitch which put us off for a while. We went back to our room and watched tv for a short while before crashing after our day.
Wednesday, November 17th., 2021…… We slept in this morning because our show (Daniel O’Donnell) wasn’t until 2:00pm. It was at the Welk Theater, which was right next door. We had coffee in the room, then showered and dressed and headed out. The weather was wonderful! We drove into town – well actually it’s called ‘the strip’ – and had breakfast. We chose the Chicken House. We got the -buy-one-get-one-half-price buffet, which was pretty good and very filling. Plus, I got my grits too! After that, we drove to the Ozark Country Campgrounds to check it out. We have camped there several times and I wanted to see if they had improved the park for our future use. Not! They have actually taken away over ¾ of the spaces and replaced them with park models/trailer modules. I’m guessing these will be daily/weekly rental units come summer. They must think that they will be a more constant rental income instead of the RV’rs. I sure hope they can rent them out!
I also took Cathye to my favorite fishing place – Cooper Creek on Lake Taneycomo. This is actually the White River, coming out of Table Rock Lake, but they call it a lake because they don’t leave the dam locks open all of the time, so the river becomes still, like a lake. It was nice enough to fish when, but I knew we weren’t there for that.
We continued on to check out the fish hatchery. You can see the 200' high dam in the background
and then went up and took a look at the lake. Beautiful! We will be on it tomorrow afternoon when we go on the Showboat Branson Belle for the dinner cruise and show. We went downtown and saw Dick’s 5 & 10 store and got a few things there. Then we stopped at Chik-Fila for a quick lunch. It was delicious. We got back to the room and changed to go to Daniel O’Donnell’s show. He is an Irish singer and has a large following in the US. I never heard of him, but he’s one of Cathye’s favorites. He is a terrific singer and his show was really entertaining. We weren't in the best of seats but still worth being there.
We got out of the show and made our way down the street to our room. Later, we walked the other way and went to Danna’s BBQ for dinner. We had been there before with Rick and Janie so I knew the food was good. We split a pulled pork patty melt, which was surprising good! We had some time to go back to the hotel and rest before the next show up that evening. We made the drive back up the strip to The Dick Clark Theater, where we were seeing ‘SIX’. We have both seen them before so we knew what to expect. No instruments. All the music and sounds come exclusively from them, via only a microphone. They are amazing. They make some serious music with any instruments! Excellent show, made even better because we had 4th row center seats!
When we got back home, we looked up the Branson Train, which we had seen while we were downtown. We thought we’d book that if we could. We got the tickets ordered and had to go to another of the many, many ticket buildings in town and – yep – we would have to go through the same song and dance sales pitch for hotel/motel stays the next day when we picked up those tickets! We found that most of the attractions are turning over bookings to these vultures. We will always try to go directly to the show’s website, when they allow, (like the Jesus show).
Branson part 2 coming soon…
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