My brother and his wife, who own the store, Beartrax, up by Brainerd, MN, usually take a well deserved vacation each fall.  This year they were going to Branson, MO and they asked us if we’d like to come along.  Now we have been on many memorable vacations with them

….like the time we took Gary’s pick up truck and a pop up camper down to Florida for a week.  Gary’s truck didn’t have a topper on it so Gary and Tim, my brother, built a wooden frame and used the old canvas top from our 24 foot Searay.  Talk about the Grapes of Rath :), not pretty but it fulfilled its purpose.  Now two could sit in the cab and two could sit in the back of the truck bed on old lawn chairs.  We left after work on a Friday, we were going to drive straight thru to Florida, we figured with 4 drivers it would be no sweat. While we were in Kentucky, near Louisville, we heard a “POP” from the camper.  We pulled over to side of the road to investigate and found out we had a flat tire on the camper.  No worries, we were prepared and had a spare.  We changed it and off we were again.  Not too far down the road, we heard another “POP”, darn, another tire on the camper went flat.    It was decided that Martha, my sister-in-law, and I would stay with the camper, and Gary and Tim would load up the tires and drive down the road a ways to see if they could get this tire fixed and a new tire as a spare.  Of course, that was back in the days when it was safe for two women to sit on the side of the road with a camper trailer :).  Well the boys found a place to fix the tire and buy a new spare, they were just getting back on the highway to pick us when…..”BANG!”   No, not a tire on the truck, how about the engine?  And on our brand new 1979 Ford pick up truck :(.   They used the CB to get a hold of someone who was able to call a tow truck to pick them up.  For those of you who don’t know what a CB is, it is a Citizen’s Band radio, kind of like the marine band we use on the boat.  People, mostly truckers, used to, and still do, have them in their vehicles to communicate with other trucks about road conditions, and the locations of “Smokies” (Highway Patrol) etc, etc.   So, mean while, Martha and I are watching down the highway for the truck to return and low and behold here comes a tow truck with our truck attached to it.  They pull over to the side, put the new tire on the camper, put the spare in place, hook up the camper to the truck and down the road we go to the nearest Ford dealer.  Sooooooo…it is now early Saturday morning, the manager hears our tale of wow and goes to work to see what he can find.  We, in the mean time, start looking for a hotel.  OMG!  It is Kentucky Derby weekend.  There is not a hotel to be had for under $200!  Crap!  We contemplate what to do…..should we rent a car and continue our vacation?  Should we buy a new truck and trade in the old one?  Such a dilemma.  Before we have to decide what to do, the Dealership Manager come to see us.  They have another engine block in their warehouse, but they can’t get it until Monday morning but once they get it, he assures us he will have us on the road by 5:00 Monday night.  He also says we can sleep in our pop-up camper in the parking lot.  He figures we should be safe as there is a high fence that surrounds the dealership and they have a night guard on duty.  We were very grateful.  We spooked around the area by the dealership and that night we went to bed in the camper.  I am sure we were a sight when people drove by.  The night watchman apparently wasn’t informed that people were in the camper and when one of our arms fell out thru a window, he drew his weapon and almost fired upon us.  Man alive!  That was a close one.  We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out in their customer service area watching TV, the Kentucky Derby of course, and chatting with who ever will talk with us.  The workers got to know us pretty well and with no shower, I sure they could smell us comin from 50 paces :).  But as promised, Monday, by 5:00 the truck was driving out of the shop with a new engine all ready to go, and the good part was everything was covered under warranty! What a nice bunch of people.  So we were able to continue our vacation to Florida.  We had a few more adventures like when one of the lawn chairs broke in half and we had to stop at a Wal-Mart for a new one.  Like when Martha and I were driving at night and there was a detour on the highway which we followed and ended up getting lost, like the time  we stopped at a bar for a drink and it came with some extra protein, a cock roach was floating in it!  Then the camp ground we stayed at, with a pool, we were warned to watch out for the alligator as he liked to slip into the pool for a dip at night.  Then the night we went out to dinner and left the sides up on the camper because it was a beautiful night, to come back to soggy sleeping bags and gear because it had rained while we were out to dinner.  All this in just one vacation.  And let me tell you, just about all of our vacations with Tim and Martha are filled with these memorable adventures so when they asked us to go on vacation to Branson, we said Hell Yah!

So we drove up to Branson from Mississippi and they drove down to Branson from Minnesota.  This was some place I had on my list of places I wanted to visit, so I was glad we were going.

The first night we went to see a free water show down by Lake Taneycomo.  There is shooting water and shooting fire.  The picture doesn’t do it justice.  But is by water so we don’t feel too out of place 🙂

Water show

We drove around the next day to check out the area.  A few of the buildings were quite interesting to look at…….

King Kong – front

Close up of Kong.  Nice plane Kong 🙂

Backside of Kong

Watch out!

Just the Titanic Building

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not building

Kind of cool.

We also went to a winery.  Free wine tasting anyone?  And they didn’t just give us a few tastes, they gave us about a dozen.  So it was a lot of fun, hick-up.

Yum! Free wine samples

The wine tasting room was nicely painted with murals on all the walls.  I happened to notice this fire alarm on the ceiling

Blood or what??????

Tim and I were trying to figure out if someone cut their finger while changing the battery or they just had paint on their hands?  What do you think?

Of course if you bought a case you got a 30% discount so we figured had to oblige them :).

After the winery we checked out some of the shopping there.  We stopped at a wood carving shop called Mountain Carving.  They had some pretty cool stuff

Wooden lamp and shade

This picture all carved outof a single piece of wood

Then we went into a Christmas Store, Kringles Christmas Shop.  I’ve seen Christmas stores before but never been in one.  I was impressed three full building full 0f any ornament you could possibly wanted.  My daughter would have thought she died and gone to heaven if she were in that shop.

Tim and Martha arrived at Branson a few hours earlier than we did.  Apparently if you go to visitor centers you can get some of the show tickets at a discounted price.  Tim and Martha were told if they would listen to a 2 hour presentation for a time share, we could get tickets for the 4 of us to 2 shows for about $15 each.  Now this was a REALLY good price and Tim and Martha figured they had a couple hours to kill before we got there, so what the heck.  They’d listen.  Well over 3 hours later and after 2 people talking to them trying to wear them down to buy a time share, they finally got our tickets and were out of there.  Thanks for taking one for the team guys 🙂

We saw the 2 shows at night,  one was a group call The SIX,

SIX

They were 6 brothers that sang with no instruments.  They made all the sounds of the instruments with their mouths.  Pretty impressive.  Then we saw the Texas Tenors.  They also were very good.   I think I expected more country western music from the Tenors and was surprised they sang anything from Country to Opera!  Both shows honored the Veterans, God and Country.  Good singing and showmanship at both shows. I would definitely recommend a visit to Branson.

We enjoyed our days with Tim and Martha.  Surprising, no big mishaps but the vacation with them will still be memorable and if they ask us again, we’ll say Hell Yah!