10-9-09-Branson, Missouri

Branson, Missouri had more traffic than Los Angeles. I could not believe how busy it was. The “Strip” where all the shows were was so busy it took about 45 minutes to go 3 miles any time of the day. We usually used the back road to avoid a lot of this traffic.

We did have a lot of fun and saw a lot of shows. The Dixie Stampede was highly rated. There were 32 horses that did many tricks. It was a competition pitting the North against the South in fun. Our side won. They had barrel racing, dancing and some comedy. It started out with a meal of Cornish game hen that was very good. It was a good show but I don’t think compared to the one in Florida that we saw last year. There was buffalo also. We also took "Flat Stanley" with us for the week. You can see him in this picture.

We saw Yakov Smirnoff who is a famous Russian Comedian that reflected insights into life, family and the United States. Anyone needing a motivational speaker he is wonderful for that. His mission statement is to “experience happiness and teach it with passion through comedy”. He started as an artist. What I found the most interesting is that he painted a mural that was 200 feet tall by 135 feet wide that was named “America’s Heart”. Mr. Yakov spent $100,000.00 on the mural himself because he felt that he wanted to do something for the people of New York. Smirnoff paid for the $100,000 mural himself

We aso saw country singers Lee Greenwood. and the Bellamy Brothers. The best in my opinon though was Neal Mc Coy. He was the best entertainer and a country singer on top of that.

Two other shows we saw was the Haygoods and SIX. The Haygood had 8 kids from the same family, 7 boys and one girl. They were good but when we saw the show the night before called SIX (Knudsen brothers) it seemed like nothing would compare. There were six boys all from the same family ranging from 16 to 32 years old. They had NO instruments only their voices. You would swear that they had drums, guitars, cymbals, violins and more. It was incredible. I tried to find something on You Tube but could not find anything that was as good as them.No girls in that family. The mom died recently from cancer.Did I mention there were six boys? Well actually there are 4 younger brothers but they were not in the show. I thought my daughter Jennifer would really love all these boys to raise. :)

We saw the Titanic Museum. Not sure why it is in Branson but very interesting.

Of course there is no good trip to Branson unless you go to the restaurant, “Home of the Throwed Rolls”. They throw these rolls across the room to you and if you are lucky you catch them, if not they just thrown another. What a lot of fun.

We are moving on today heading for Nashville, TN