Friday started out with some swimming in the pool at the motel. Katie’s so tall now that she can hop on her tip-toes in the 3 foot deep section. She’s really taken to swimming more now that she’s able to touch bottom more often. Amelia just loves to be in the water. For the rest of the trip whenever we went outside, she’d point to the swimming pool and say "uh, uh" which is Amelian for "Daddy, I insist that we go over there".
Next we headed out to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. You can see by the picture that it’s a distinctive facade on the building. The museum is pretty cool – I wouldn’t say it was great, but if you have time you should see it. The most memorable exhibit inside was the statue of a man who was 8’11". I could barely reach the top of his head. The other interesting piece was the world’s largest ball of yarn. Becky thought it was hilarious because when we talked about this vacation before we left, I mentioned how I bet on this trip we’ll see something like the world’s largest ball of yarn. So I got her picture with it.
Next we went to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand restaurant. That was cool and Becky got to try her first ever Po’ Boy sandwich, which unfortunately wasn’t as good as she expected. The greeter was all decked out in her sock hop outfit, and they showed clips of the classic show, so it was a cool place for some lunch.
After lunch we dropped Laura off at the Titantic exhibit and tried to guess how many times she’d hear "My Heart Will Go On" (surprisingly none). Amelia was out, so Katie and I headed in to the Dinosaur Museum which was actually in an old building that looked like a Office Max. One half was a Haunted House and the other half was the Dinosaur Museum, and we were alone in the museum. Katie was afraid of all of the dinosaurs, so it ended up to be a quick trip as I had to hold her the whole time. She still thought it was interesting.
We had about two hours to kill before our big Dixie Stampede show, so we stopped at a Coldstone Creamery. After we got our ice cream, Amelia got insanely mad and we didn’t know what the issue was. After about 10 minutes of crying, we realized it was because she wanted to eat the ice cream all by herself instead of having it fed to her. She was just so tired she was in meltdown mode. We drove around for the next hour checking out all the sites around Branson, including this area called Branson Landing which is on the shore of Lake Taneycomo and has some hipper stores. We dropped Amelia off with Grandma Nola who was at the Shoji Tabuchi Show, and headed to our destination.
Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede is a dinner show similar to the Medieval Times show with two competing sides on either side of the large stadium like area. We were on the side of the north – it was Becky, Laura and Katie sitting on our laps because it was like $40 for her to have her own ticket. We served the side of the north, and to be honest, I was a little uncomfortable having a civil war like battle between the north and the south. I wasn’t sure how they were going tout the merits of the south "Yeah, we eventually got rid of slavery." or "Well, a few years ago after it was mandated, we figured we could have blacks to the same schools as whites." Anyway, the meal was awesome – we got a biscuit, vegetable soup, a full chicken (legs and everything), a slice of pork, a seasoned half a potato, corn on the cob, and an apple turnover. As we were finishing off our potatoes (okay, I was finishing it off, Becky was staring at all her food and holding her stomach), one of the cast asked Becky and I if we wanted to participate in the show, being that we were 2 of the 10 people less than 55 at the show. I asked if we had to ride a horse, and he said, "not exactly". It’s a long story for another day, but I’m not a big fan of riding a horse after my last episode, which Becky would be more than happy to tell you all about. So we headed down the the entrance to the stage/stadium floor and put on different shoes and meet the other three couples competing (2 couples from the north and 2 from the south). We went out to the middle of the floor and the men were asked to go pick a horse they wanted to ride. I headed to the tallest horse, only to find that it was a charade. What we were really supposed to do is race a stick horse around 2 barrels. Well, I’m proud to say Becky and I were responsible for the north losing. I wasn’t sure how fast to go at first without potentially losing Becky off the back, and by the time I figured out we could go faster, it was too late. Overall the show was fun – it was quite a performance overall.
When we got back to the hotel, it was social hour for the family reunion. We met the family members briefly as there were a few from Becky’s grandmas’ family and several from the other branches who we didn’t really know. I took the girls back to go to sleep (which took forever) and we called it a night.
Eric's space 