May 12, 2015

Back After a Long Weekend in Branson

We left here Wednesday, reaching Tulsa just in time to eat dinner with Brownie when she got off work at 7pm. She is currently working a split shift, so we slept in at a hotel while she worked her early shift and then we met again at 9am for breakfast. Then it was on to Branson. The weather forecast didn't look good for Friday through Sunday, so we went straight to Silver Dollar City and caught the last show for Rhonda Vincent and The Rage, and then spent some time checking out the rest of the park while we had fair weather.

Then it was off to find the house we rented for the weekend. It was in Stonebridge Village, a residential community. Village hardly describes it; it is 3200 wild, mountainous acres. We considered ourselves lucky that we had daylight and clear skies to navigate the steep, winding roads to find our house, called a lodge by the owners. Even then, we missed several turns and had to backtrack.

The owners had some strict rules in the contract (yes, we had to sign a contract for a four day rental), including penalty fees if we arrived before 4pm on the day of arrival or left after 10:30am on the day of departure. This, they explained, was so the cleaning crew could get started as soon as we left and have the lodge ready for the next occupant. So we were a bit peeved when we arrived at 6pm to find the beds unmade and wet towels on the floor. I called the lodge owner and she said they would be right over. Meantime, we unloaded the car and put all our stuff beside the door and sat at the table waiting instead of going to eat and to the grocery store as planned. The cleaning crew was there about thirty minutes and cleaned everything with a spray bottle of something with no odor. They also missed the mouse poop on the bedside table. Ick. Other than that, it was a nice house with two master bedrooms, one on each end along with a small living room, kitchen, and dining room. It also had a small washer and dryer which we used several times.

The next morning dawned overcast but dry, so we headed back to Silver Dollar City (SDC). Lil was driving in from St. Louis and went straight to SDC. We had show lover's passes to Rhonda Vincent's 1:45 show and we saw several other shows, including Nothing Fancy. We enjoyed them so much that we decided to get the show lover's passes to their Saturday show as well as another Rhonda Vincent show. We left SCD early because we had a reservation at Dobyns Dining Room at the College of the Ozarks. If you have a chance, it's worth a visit. The college is tuition free but requires every student to work on campus. Our waiter was friendly, courteous, informative, and had just finished his last exam before graduating Sunday. It was also his last day of work and we were his very last table. To say he was euphoric is an understatement.

This is the dining room. Excuse the crummy iphone quality.



We weren't lucky enough to make it back to the lodge before it started raining, and it was a little scary on those hills. I don't know how those people drive when the roads are bad. If I lived there, it would only be if Hubby was retired and we didn't have to drive if we didn't want to. Those people must have strong leg muscles too. It's hard to find a level place to stand on, much less walk very far. Yes, I'm a wimp.

Saturday, we were once again blessed with better weather than forecast. It did drizzle on us a time or two, but not the heavy rains that were predicted, so we felt very lucky. The shows were great and we briefly considered coming back on Sunday. It would have been fun to see Rhonda Vincent every day she was there, even though the die hard fans go to every show all four days. But after watching the weather, we thought we should get in as many miles as we could before the bad weather hit. As it turned out, we hit Rockwall just as it started raining and a tornado was spotted over I30 east of mile marker 74. And where were we? Mile marker 74! The clouds were swirling in all directions overhead, but we never saw a funnel. When we got home, it was raining so hard that we decided to just leave everything in the car and unload in the morning. The cat was torn between happiness to see us and being ticked off. So he rubbed on us awhile, and then used his complaining voice to scold awhile, and then it was back to rubbing, purring, and not letting us out of his sight. He was velcro cat for a couple of days before he resumed his normal routine.

3 comments:

  1. Impressive looking restaurant; impressive looking blog. I confess that I can't hear about Tulsa without being reminded of the Gene Pitney number from the 60s - in the UK some of us re-named it, "24 hours from Tulse Hill" (a debatable suburb of south London).

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  2. Sounds like you had a lot of fun. I'd have been peeved about the lodge rental too. Thankfully it sounds like they got it cleaned up pretty quickly.

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  3. catching up here!!! Isn't it nice renting something else than a hotel (and sorry they flubbed a bit). That's what we did in Berkeley, and it was a great stay. Sounds like you had a great time (minus the winding roads).

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