September 21 Our First Day in Branson

Happy Birthday Carole! Not sure if you are home or still in Laughlin, but wish you a great day and hope you won lots of money!

Bill coughed and coughed all night. Needless to say, neither of us slept very well. When I woke up at 8 he was on the little couch so I kinda just laid there and waited for him to wake up.

Once we were up, had some breakfast, showered and walked Xena, we headed to the Locksmith to see if we could get new keys for the RV and SUCCESS! At least now I have those keys back in my possession. Bill wanted to check out “The Strip”, which is the main drag kinda like Vegas that is solid traffic and has most of the hotels and performance venues along it. Branson is not easy to navigate. It’s build on the side of a mountain so the area to be built is leveled along side the mountain for one road and buildings on each side, then there’s another level done the same way. Not many connecting roads to change back and forth to the main ones. We spotted a Walmart, not the same one as yesterday, but stopped to get some cough medicine for Bill and honey for my tea. Then we went a little further up and stopped at the Tangier Outlet malls for a while. Didn’t go in many stores, but Bill got some stuff at Bath and Body Works, I got a top at Liz Claiborne and looked for a purse there and a few other places but no luck. I knew Bill was tired and shopped out already so we got back on the road and the traffic is just so bad he asked where he could turn. We headed in the direction of the Welk Theatre where we’re going to see Ray Stevens and there was a winery along the way. Being the nice husband that he is, Bills said we could stop. We were going to go on the tour but there was a 15 minute wait and the tour was going to be an hour and he didn’t feel like hanging out there that long, so I got in on a wine tasting instead and left with 3 bottles of wine and he got 2 of juices. Kerry and Karen, guess what you’ll be getting. We also got a pretty good price on cheese curds so we each picked our own flavors. Mine is dill and garlic!

Once we found the Welk Theatre we took a different route back thinking it might be less traffic when we drive there to the show. Well it was a very scenic ride across the Rock Table Lake Dam and then of the lake and several parks, but it was hilly and curvy and not really a very direct route. We agreed the tourist maps are not the best and not even close to scale.

After lunch Bill wanted to go to the Old City of Branson to the Dick’s Old Time 5 and 10. It’s pretty close to the park and luckily we found a space right away. The town is downhill so we walked up a block to the store and we loved it. Nostalgic and a little bit of everything. They even had garter replacements for girdles and I think they even made them any more. It really reminded me of the stores when I was a kid. From there we went up another block or 2 and looked in the shops, stopped in the fudge shop and got a dark chocolate turtle to share for our dessert, stopped in the ice cream shop for a scoop each and did the shops on the way back down.

We didn’t event think to take our cameras today so there are no photos. We have a week so we will take them on our future outings.

When we got back lucky little Xena got a bath. I had planned to buy some kind of plastic tub even if we only used it once, but then I remembered we have a shower sprayer on the outside and it has hot and cold water, so I put down a piece of plastic and Bill helped (for the first time in 12 years) to give Xena a bath. He always helps towel her but not the bath part. I was afraid she might make a run for it and we had taken off her harness. She did really well and tonight she is all fluffy and smelling good!

I’ve been trying to get the TV in the bed room working so tried all the cables I had then swapped them with the big TV, then tried the little TV in the living room and it works fine, so know it has to do with the cable. I noticed when we bathed Xena that the Class A beside us was not using their cable hook up and we have 2 long cables so we hooked it up and ran it into the bedroom window and TA DA, the TV came on. If the RV place can’t fix it for free then I’ll just buy a splitter and see about installing an outlet to hook to or run a cable in myself. I am so over trying to get that TV to work.

I washed up all the rags we’ve dirtied in a week and tomorrow will do some regular wash. It’s so nice not having to go to the laundry. Just like home, pop the clothes in the washer and fix dinner or read email or read. Well, that’s not always just like home. For dinner I made venison cube steaks, boiled new potatoes with butter and dill and a tossed salad. Later we shared our turtle and the dark chocolate was pretty darn good.

Bill did up his dishes and we watched the season openers of NCIS. Too bad we didn’t bring a VCR to tape what we’ll miss tomorrow night. Up til now it didn’t matter as most were reruns but we hate to get behind on our favorite shows.

Need to hem the sleeves on my new top!