We woke up to a beautiful September morning in Kimberling City, MO, but we didn’t know what to do. We hadn’t developed any plans up to this point, and when we went to search for Becky’s mom and grandma, they weren’t to be found. We found out later they were spending the morning receiving a pitch about timeshares in the area, in return for tickets to some shows in the area. We knew they had plans to go to a theme park called Silver Dollar City that day, so we figured we’d stall until then. We drove around the area to get ourselves familiar with all the winding roads through this area of the Ozarks. We stopped at Table Rock Dam which is the dam that’s responsible for creating the beautiful and seemingly never-ending Table Rock Lake.
Before we headed to the park, I was tasked with getting some sunscreen since there wasn’t a cloud in the sky all day. I went into the local grocery store and found every sunless tanning solution known to man, but my only sunscreen options were one that was an SPF4 (why even bother) or one that came in a stick form like deodorant, but was SPF50. So I chose the Speed Stick option, and it’s a good thing we had a long ride to the park, since it took us 20 minutes to cover up each girl.
We spent the afternoon at Silver Dollar City which I would classify as a combination of a renaissance festival and an amusement park. The park is lined with artisans and stages for the various acts. We really didn’t spend any time with the artisans or at the shows, we mostly made our way through that area to the back of the park where the rides were. Katie had a lot of fun going on ride after ride. Amelia even joined in on a couple rides. Katie made good friends with Becky’s aunt Fran since Fran was so willing to go on all the rides with her. We took the train around the park (you can avoid that – we went too fast through the park so you didn’t see much). Overall we had a good time and the girls were exhausted as we left.
After a nap in the car and a change of clothes for everyone, our family plus Becky’s cousin Laura headed to a restaurant that was recommended in our Ozark book called "The Plantation". It really captured the essence of Branson in my mind. When we arrived, we thought there wouldn’t be seating because there were so many people around the doorway. I went in to look to discover that there were plenty of seats available, and the reason for the congestion was that all the senior citizens were leaving at once to make it to their evening shows. There must have been 20+ people in line to pay their bill. When we got in there, we were treated to the horrifically slow and old country music of Stephen Wayne Clark. His recurring gig is to play the timeless country classics to people trying to get around him to get through the buffet line. However, when we first arrived, he had some senior citizens dancing in the aisles.
We were greeted by a customized "howdy" and some true southern hospitality. Becky and I had the Prime Rib while the girls and Laura opted for the buffet (pronounced boo-fay). Amelia really dug into the corn – I would venture to say she ate about 500 kernels and left at least that many on the floor around here. After we paid, I went back to the restroom to change her and found 4 people working to try to clean up her mess with one of them saying, "well, I guess I know what I’ll be doing tonight." Sometimes it pays for us to go out to eat.
After dinner we headed back home to sleep as we were all exhausted from the long day of vacation.
Eric's space 