Not sick or not dead

Just being lazy.  We are now back at our pad between Yale and Cushing, Oklahoma.  Since my last posting we had a couple from Fort Worth, Texas come up to Branson.  We met them in the Castle Lakes Campground in Colorado this summer.  They are the ones that I talked about that were having the party that they invited us to when we were just walking by.  Their names are Dale and Lue Prior and their cute little dog Harley, yes he was named after the motorcycle.  They camped at Treasure Lake under our membership.  We did most of the usual things that you do at Branson, shop and eat.  We went to one of the Outlet Malls and took them to Branson’s Landing.

We had used our Jeep for some of the running around so Dale wanted to use theirs to drive around and look at the foliage.  He has a Jeep Wrangler.

You may have noticed it doesn’t have any running boards.  Twila sure did.

It’s hard to do the foliage justice with a picture but I tried with a few.

Thought I had better put in a picture of Harley.  He’s the little one.

We got in from Branson Tuesday the 20th and have just been resting up since then.  We are going over to Mike and Terri Prough’s house tomorrow since the grandkids will be out of school.

Day of fun

We took off this morning about 10:30 with Jack and Barbara Miller and Dewayne and Vicki Jackson.  We were headed for the Mountain Man Nut and Fruit Company but when we got there they were closed.  The sign said for inventory and licensing and that it was temporary but they didn’t have a date when they would be open again.  This is one of the best places in Branson to shop for coffee and candy so I hope it is temporary.

 

Since we couldn’t go there we headed for the Craft Mall which is next door.  The girls had a really good time.  I looked at all the wood carvings.  Found one booth that really caught my attention.  It had some really good deep relief carvings.

I think this one was $3500.  After the Craft Mall we went down the street about a block to the Amish Store.  Lots of good stuff there too.

By this time it was time to eat so we headed to the College of the Ozarks for lunch.  We were suppose to have a 40 minute wait which turned into close to an hour.  It was worth the wait.  The College of the Ozarks is a college where students can get an education by working at the college.  They raise flowers, milk cows, bake fruit cakes, and make jelly to mention a few.  They also work at the restaurant where we ate, cooking and serving.  They even have a water mill where they grind grains into flour, cornmeal, and other products like pancake mix.  the mill was built in 1972 but looks like it could have been built a hundred years earlier.

I took a picture of everyone (except me) at the back of the mill.

Here are some pictures of some of the flowers at the college.

 

We went by the Tractor Museum which mostly has John Deer’s with a few other brands.  They also had a Jeep that I have never seen before.  They didn’t have any information on it so I don’t know what year it was made or what it was used for.

Silver Dollar City Trip 1

I titled this trip 1 since I know we will be going more than once.  That’s what happens when old people buy season tickets and want to get their money's worth.  Well maybe, but Jack and Barbara Miller and Dewayne and Vicki Jackson from our Good Sam Chapter in Oklahoma arrived today and we will probably be going to Silver Dollar City with one or both couples.  They arrived about 5pm and we got together at our motor home for a little while before we went to supper at McFarland’s Restaurant.

Twila and I had gone out to Silver Dollar City about 2pm and walked around a little bit before it got too cold for us and we left about 4pm.  We watched a demonstration of sawing using an old steam tractor with a belt drive to the saw, and then we walked down to the school

that Dad always talked about.  You know the one where he had to walk to school barefoot in the snow up hill both ways.

We saw a lot of wood carving and I took pictures but I won’t bore you with them.  They are for future inspiration when we get to Texas and I get back to carving again.

They had the park decorated with scarecrows for the Harvest Festival.  They were kind of cute, but one of them was really Ugly.

Yes I am talking about the one on the left. For some reason Twila took my picture by these scarecrows. You can't read the sign they are holding but it says 'FRESH FRUIT' & she thought it was appropriate. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Branson at last

We drove to Branson yesterday, in the rain most of the way.  The GPS was telling us to stay on US 60 which would have connected with US 65 about 11 miles south of Springfield.  In our infinite wisdom we decided that was going way out of the way ---- so we decided to drop down on US 63 out of Willow Springs, then we went west on US 160.  Wrong!!!!!!!  If you're not driving a sports car or a motorcycle you don’t ever want to get on US 160.  The curves, and there must have been several hundred, were posted at 35 to 45 maximum and the speed limit was only 55 mph.  The speed limit really wasn’t a problem since in the motor home you very seldom got to that speed anyway.  I figure the fuel economy dropped from 7 to 4 mpg since I drove most of the way in 3rd or 4th gear.

This morning I didn’t get out of bed until 9:30am.  About noon we decided to go down to Branson’s Landing for lunch and of course shopping.  We bought Twila a new pair of binoculars at Bass Pro Shop.  We had bought a new pair about a year or so ago but every time we used them we had to adjust them for our different eyes so we decided to get Twila a pair for herself.  Should be real handy when we go to Alaska.  I took a picture of the fountain and one of the murals inside Bass Pro Shop.

   

Corvette Museum and a few Corvairs

We stopped by the Corvette Museum which is off Exit 28 on I-65 which was also were we turned off to head towards Branson.  This one of those real cool places that you get to see ever once in a while.  The Museum is across from the Corvette and Cadillac XLR Assembly Plant.  We didn’t take the tour of the plant since we didn’t feel we had the time and it might have caused us to go into a buying frenzy.

I decided to try out Twila’s luck and had her buy 2 tickets for the raffle on a 2010 Corvette Coupe.  The tickets were $10 each and I figured that was cheap enough for a new Corvette.

 

Of course if we won it I would trade it for this 62 Vette.

The ultimate Corvette would be this 53 model.

 

They also had a collection of Corvairs.  Dad had one of these pickup and I had a 64 Coupe.  Mine was a Monza and it was black.

We made it to “Hinton RV Park” in Sikeston, MO for the night and tomorrow we should be to Treasure Lake at Branson.

Mammoth Cave

We went to Mammoth Cave National Park today.  After Carlsbad Caverns it was a little bit of a disappointment.  Mammoth Cave is huge and that about says it all.  We took the Historical Entrance Tour which is about 2 miles long and takes about 2 hours.  There are other tours that according to the pictures we saw are prettier than the Historical Tour but even they don’t hold a candle to Carlsbad.  I would suggest to anyone that hasn’t seen either cave that they go to Mammoth first and than Carlsbad.  With that said, We were glad we went to Mammoth Cave.  It is the longest discovered cave in the world with 367 miles of connected caves and they are still exploring.  There wasn’t much to take a picture of in the cave so I bought a book and tried to take pictures of the pictures in the book.  They aren’t very good but are better than nothing.

This is a stretch called “Fat Man’s Misery”.

This is called the “Giant’s Coffin”.

This was close to the end of the to tour at a point called Mammoth Dome.  They have built a tower stairway to go from level 4 to level 2 which then circles back to the opening we used to enter the cave.

Dollywood

We went to Dollywood on Wednesday the 30th of September after 3pm so that just like Silver Dollar City you can get in the next day they are open for free.  Since Twila and I have season passes for Silver Dollar City we were able to get in for half price.  It normally is $50 a day for seniors, so we got in for $50 for both of us.  We went to one show on Wednesday but mainly we just walked around looking.  Dollywood is similar to Silver Dollar City but instead of just being about hill people times, Dollywood has some of that but it also has a lot of stuff about the 50’s and of course a lot about Dolly, how see was raised, and her career.

We went back to Dollywood today and this time instead of paying $8 for parking, we road the Pigeon Forge Trolley for a quarter each each way.

 

This was a much better way since it dropped us off and picked us up right next to the entrance so we didn’t have to pay for parking or walk to a Dollywood Trolley and then ride about 1/4 mile to the entrance.  It was a lot more crowded today than it was Wednesday.  This was the first day of the National Gospel & Harvest Celebration.  They had a carving contest going on and had the top 25 entries on display for the crowd to vote of their favorite.  They really had some great carvings.

Twila and I road the train.  It was a coal burning steam locomotive.  It was a pretty ride back into the woods.  Some of the trees have started to change but probably only 25%.  It will look a lot different in 2 or 3 weeks.

  

I took a picture of some eggs hatching.  That one in the middle is a cute chick.

Tomorrow we head for Mammoth Cave National Park and Gary and Mattie start for home.