Branson

It’s hard to believe that it’s the first of October today.  With the string of hot days we’ve been having, is seems more like mid-August.  And the forecast is the same for the next several days.

The cool nights are a giveaway, however.  Each day we look forward to when the sun goes down and the heat of the day disappears.  Then it becomes downright pleasant--good sleeping weather, something that usually doesn’t happen in August.

We took a walk in the cool of the day last night,  Out our host’s driveway and back up the dead-end street.  Counted probably a dozen deer grazing about the large lots, including a six-point buck.  The large lots and wide separation of neighborhood homes made for a very quiet night.  If we ever come this way again, we will definitely look into staying here.

We stopped at a city sports complex to take a walk. Our walk took us past the Ozarks Coca Cola bottling plant.  From the sidewalk we could see into the giant windows in the office lobby and they had a display of a collection of Coke machines from years gone by.  That dates me somewhat as I can remember some of them sitting in stores and gas stations, and they dispensed bottles that you would open a door and pull the bottle out.  They also had a Model A delivery truck full of crates of bottles.  OK, that one is before my time.

We drove down to Branson.  We were here over 30 years ago and saw the “King of Branson”, Shoji Tabuchi, a fiddle player who played in his own theater in Branson for nearly 30 years.  He died of pancreatic cancer two years ago.  Lots of other shows to see and we stopped at the visitor center to check schedules.  From there we hiked the half-mile to the two-for-one ticket store and bought tickets to the Shanghai Theatre, for a Chinese actrobat/circus show.  We were at a show in Beijing 17 years ago which was amazing so we thought we would see something like that again.

Turns out this was nothing like the show in Beijing.  While Beijing had multiple people doing daring stunts on trapezes and bicycles, this was more circus and less acrobatics.  Jugglers, unicycle riders, handstands on stacks of chairs, people balancing stuff on their heads, and even a clown. They were all very good at what they did and they did some cool stuff, but no match to Beijing.  The choreography was a bit rough at times, particularly the transitions in the background music, but it was a decent show. 

When I went in to select seats for the show, I was able to pick the VIP seats, second row from the front, for no additional charge.  With no one in front of us, we had front-row seats.  The theater was less than one-fourth full

Coming out of this show, we stopped by another ticket retailer and bought tickets to the Haygoods, supposedly Branson’s most popular show.  No VIP seats here, we are up in the nosebleed section.  We will be going to that one on Saturday evening.

We stopped for dinner just down the street at Cheddars.  Remember Cheddars?  If you do, you’re probably older than dirt like we are.  We had one in Grand Rapids years ago, but after burning down twice, they gave up on that one.

We are now camped at Table Rock State Park, just outside of town.  We chose a non-electric site, since we have adequate battery power for tonight and tomorrow.  The electric sites are all clustered in the central loops and are crowded with big campers.  The non-electric sites are nearly empty and more along the edges, so they are quieter and away from the awning lights and palm tree lights of the electric crowd.

Tomorrow after exploring the area some more, we will head into Lampe and check into our project.