The road trip was good. Had a couple of very minor disagreements with my road buddy. I was on my best behavior so I did not lash out or otherwise express my minor frustrations inappropriately. Good for me. I have been a bitch in the past. Actually, the road buddy is a very sweet person so it was not that hard. However, she kept telling me to get gas when there was more than half a tank!! Some things are just so inexplicable and that was one of them. I mean, we were traveling on interstates, not in Siberia. The other thing is that she kind of thinks out loud, a stream of consciousness thing that can be annoying, especially if I am trying to read. All in all though, these things are easily overlooked because she is such a great person.
Now, Branson is in the Ozarks, which means it is a very pretty setting, but boy is the town itself tacky looking! And the food was bad, bad, bad. There were all these "country buffet" places with canned fruit and vegetables and gross (IMO) meat like catfish. Also a lot of stuff was fried. I had a good meal the first night at a steakhouse on Branson Landing, which is the upscale shopping/dining area. I had a burger of course. We ate outside to see the "fire and water" show on the lake and it was so hot!! And you could actually feel the heat when they did the "fire" part. After Branson Landing, the rest of the dining was bad! We had Sunday "brunch" at the Plantation Restaurant and it was awful. Not my idea of brunch at all, but when in Rome.....
Branson is very God and country which was ok. It IS in the bible belt, after all, which I did not realize until I was there. Of course, I am not against God or country, but it was a bit much. Very wholesome and family friendly. I mean, there was no alcohol served at any of the shows, and we saw five of them. The first three shows are only worth mentioning in order to record that I was there:
1-the show on the Branson Belle paddleboat steamship or whatever it was. Dinner was awful, but they had to serve something like 700 people the same dinner, so what could we expect? The ventriloquist Todd Oliver was funnier than expected and the Broadway medley done by a very enthusiastic quartet was cute.
2-The Dixie Stampede: ok, kind of cute, bad food, not worth the money (IMO)
3-Cirque Montage-kind of a low rent Cirque du Soleil, with a funny juggler named Lucas as the opening act. Oh no, wait, Lucas was the opening act for the Dixie Stampede.
Well, I went to a time share presentation AND a travel club presentation, said no extremely firmly, and got a bunch of deals on tickets for all 3 of us, so no big loss. But if Branson is famous for its shows, you would think they would be better. Maybe I am just spoiled by easy access to Broadway although I am hardly what you'd call "cultured". It is hard to explain this w/o sounding pretentious or elitist or both.
By the way, the 3rd person, with whom we met up in Branson, was fun. Definitely opinionated, but since I am the same way I can hardly call it a flaw. Best part: she slept in the living room on the couch all week, which allowed me to have a room all to myself!! Woo! She was easy to get along with, so either she is really sweet, or she was just on her best behavior. Either way, I appreciated it. I had never met her before; she was a high school friend of my road buddy (the person who owned the time share)
So show #4 was "Noah" at the Sound and Light Theatre. (there is also one in Lancaster, PA, which is 50 or 60 miles from here, but I have never been.). It was pretty bad--the script, the acting, the music. But I liked the staging with the tiers of animals all around the audience. Well, on 3 sides. And at the end, they invited people to come forward to be reborn or just to pray. According to ma mere, who is quite Catholic, this does not happen at the one in Lancaster, where she has seen a few shows.
So far, all 4 shows were kind of duds. And then, we saw "Six", about which I'd heard excellent things. I really enjoyed that one. 6 singing brothers do an a cappella show, where they actually make their voices sound like musical instruments. Impressive and fun. Of course they ended their show in typical Branson way by asking all vets to stand for applause (which I like and appreciate) and by doing a religious number. Ok, Branson is all about that. The brothers said they like playing Branson because they can talk about God out in the open or something like that and I thought, where in the USA can't they do that? They might have meant that they could do it in other places, but that it would not be appreciated as part of a show. Anyway, I bought one of their CDs at intermission and got 3 of them to autograph it. They were not really that friendly when they signed it. What the hell though; I was not there to make friends with them.
So, our last night there we finally got to the pool, which was great. We had been too booked up with shows before that (and I only wanted to go at night for obvious reasons).
Then we got back on the road the next day, took the well-behaved friend to the airport and set off to do our trip backwards. It was surprisingly hard to read the trip-tik (from AAA) backwards, so I was lucky to have written down directions from google maps. What a boring ride scenery wise!!! A lot of flat, although there were some mountains in MO, WV and PA. Of course, when there were mountains I was scared and when it was flat I was bored. Also, both ways, Indiana had non-stop heat lightning. It must be kind of eerie to live in Indiana, at least along route 70.
Branson is full of tourist trap "craft villages" that have crappy crafts for sale. I mean, just cheap junk. Some of the stores were fun though, like Dick's Five and Dime, where I bought Route 66 refrigerator magnets and some shot glasses for the offspring (and offspring #1's girlfriend). Actually, that was the only store that was fun. There is an Avon store in Branson! I was excited to see it, but it was disappointingly boring and not well stocked. I did get a couple things, but the thrill just was not there.
Some people go to Branson every year, and I just don't get it, but it takes all kinds, to each his own, Johnny Walker red/Johnny Walker black, etc.
I bought a cooler just before we left, so we were able to keep diet soda and snacks cold and save on some meals on the road. We also went food shopping in Branson and had some meals at the fully equipped time share. The resort was pretty nice but I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have had I not been melting every time I stepped outside. Road buddy did a lot of cooking but unfortunately I don't like a lot of the things she likes so I hope I did not hurt her feelings.
I have no wish to return to Branson, but I'm glad I went. It was certainly an inexpensive trip---free place to stay, about $250 in gas (road buddy paid about $65 of this, by subterfuge. I really wanted to pay for all the gas because she owns the time share and did not ask us to pay anything to stay there with her), $40 in tolls, and the shows. Not bad. Oh, she paid for the Motel 6 in Effingham, IL (all we could get w/o reservations) on the way there, and I paid for the Hilton in Terre Haute on the way back.
Next up: total knee replacement surgery on August 4. Can't wait
