Thursday morning early the crack of lightning and the roll of thunder told us that the weather had changed after we returned to our hotel from the Clay Cooper's Country Express show. We had gotten in late and knew if the rains came for our last morning that we could enjoy a late. start.
The Branson experience has been fun. When we finally decided to come to Branson, we spent time discussing it with our two Branson experts, Rob and Traci, who make several trips here each year for work. They know us pretty well and could answer questions about what the different shows were like, places to stay, places to eat.....the general things that tourist who are not on the tour bus think about. Of course the one element that a lot of people enjoy is not one of our things: shopping. But, we have observed and we have listened to conversations on the elevator and we have watched people toddling back to tour buses and cars loaded with bags of "stuff." So, we feel comfortable saying that if shopping is your thing that this just might be a good place for you to come.
One thing we know now from experience is that if you want to be entertained with good, solid music with all the lights, sounds, multimedia stuff thrown in, this is your place. If you want to find a small theater where the music and the story are the center of the experience, you can find it. We tried to get a variety of experiences and types of music within what we truly enjoy. We have done it.
We chose the Pressley Family show for what we call the traditional country review show similar to the format of the Opry..... , lots of laughs (and the skits were funny with some corn thrown in) and a good mix of different types of songs. We went to the Mickey Gilley Show because he is one of the very dwindling few of the older stars who are still around. We also love his music. His show also was well done with a good band behind him. We enjoyed the film clips woven into his show. We went to the Dublin Irish Tenors and Celtic Ladies because I love Irish music. They also performed several numbers from operas, some old traditional non Celtic numbers and some dance. From Danny Boy which was the opening number to the encore You'll Never Walk Alone. I was in heaven. One show that Rob told us not to miss was the Clay Cooper Country Express. I knew the music would be good, but I had no idea how much I would laugh. This would definitely be on my do not miss list.
During a break we ran out to the College of the Ozarks, a small college founded in 1906 on the premise that all worthy students who were needy could get a good solid academic education by working at the college while they attended tuition free. The lines were so long for lunch that we made a reservation for early dinner, got some ice cream (homemade at the school's dairy), browsed through the gift shop, and headed to our next show. When we returned for dinner we enjoyed the rustic old cabin feel of the logs walls and the huge stone fire place. Our waiter was a senior from Lagos, Nigeria who was interesting to talk to and get to know a little while he very ably waited on our needs, keeping our drink glasses full and answering our questions. The salad was so fresh, it was as good as if I had grown the lettuce and Klep the tomatoes. All in all, this would be another of our "musts" on our recommendation list. Since we had a little time before our evening show, we drove out to Table Lake just because several people we had met during the trip said we should. It was a nice lake.
Our primary focus this trip was the shows, but we did find a little restaurant down close to the Branson Landing in the old part of Branson called Rocky's where we had lunch on Tuesday. It was a hundred year old building and the food, Italian, was good.
Now we pack up the Branson bag and get ready to see a little more of Missouri before we head on to our next reunion in Wisconsin. We've got to see the places all those Kleppers came to over a hundred years ago!
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