I can’t believe we had another major issue when we tried to set up in Branson, plus a couple of other stupid mistakes I made. I don’t even want to talk about it yet, so I’ll wait til the end of this post to document what happened and just try to ignore it for now. 🙂
We stayed a week at Turkey Creek – an Escapees RV Park. Since we’re members of the Escapee RV Club, we got a great deal on the price, too!
As we drove through Branson, we saw signs saying the Haygoods were the best show in Branson, so of course we wanted to see it if it was the best! Ha, I think the signs were right — there was a ridiculous amount of talent, incredible lighting and projections, and a few super entertaining gimmicks thrown in. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of seeing this show first, so it was hard not to compare others to it. I would go back to see this one again, since there was so much going on, I’m sure I’d catch more by watching it again. We had great seats, too, about 5 rows back from the stage, but off-center. Highly recommended!
The next day we went to the Branson Murder Mystery. They had a dinner buffet before the show, then they assigned about 12 parts to audience volunteers who got a hat and a script with their lines on it. I was expecting it to be pretty stupid and corny, but I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. The comedy was clever, with lines from popular songs interwoven and sung throughout the script. Most of the audience members did a pretty good job with their parts, or else they were funny with how bad they were. The real actors went off script quite a bit (or at least made us *think* they were off) and laughed at themselves, which was funny. At the end, we got to vote on which audience member did the best job and which one we thought was the murderer. I’m not sure what the process was for selecting me, maybe they just randomly pulled my paper, or maybe I was the only one who got it “right”, but they called me up to say I guessed the murderer correctly. The food was just ok, but the murder mystery was very entertaining!
On the third day, we went to see The Duttons. The main Dutton family members include an in-law and a granddaughter (who both Randy & I thought was the best of all of them!), but they brought out a bunch of other grandkids for several other numbers. Including one who sang but should not have been, and one who played sang great and played several different instruments, including a bunch of squeeze bulb horns that had different pitches — fun! They are evidently good friends with the Osmonds and had Jay Osmond come out for a couple of songs, too. I had actually forgotten there were more performers in the Osmond family besides Donny and Marie. They put on a good show, and we entertained; They just didn’t compare to the Haygoods, but that’s ok.
After going to church at Woodland Hills, we drove to Mel’s Hard Luck Diner for lunch, only to find out they’re closed on Sundays. 🙁 So, we decided to go to The Keeter Center at College of the Ozarks for Sunday Brunch instead. We had never been there before and were impressed! It’s a huge restaurant run by students at the college, including using food they grow there. They did a fabulous job! It was not only presented well, it tasted great too. We almost decided not to go, given the $30/meal price, but I thought it was worth the experience of eating there. Especially since it included ice cream from their Creamery. We walked around their prayer garden and chapel afterwards, to try to walk off some of the meal. (I ate way too much, which is why I don’t like doing buffets, but I love tasting it all!)
On our last full day in Branson, we went to the Table Rock Lake State Park visitor center then to the nearby Moonshine Beach. The beach area had a self-serve payment box where we paid $5 to get in. There were lots of shells in the sand, but it was clean and the water was pretty clear and the temperature was perfect — refreshing but not too cold. We hung out there for a couple of hours then went back to Mel’s Hard Luck Diner where we enjoyed the singing waiters along with ice cream. On our way back to the RV, we stopped to walk around Branson Landing. The fountains/fire there are timed to music and are mesmerizing to watch.
Even though we had to cut our stay in Branson one night short in order to drop off the RV at the roof repair place on time, we stuck around to see Esther at the Sight & Sound Theater before leaving. And boy was that worth it! We have seen three other shows there and have loved all them, so we keep an eye out for when the show changes and plan another trip to Branson to see it. We usually sit in the back section of seats, in order to get a good view of the entire 270 degree set and aisles; but this time we sat in the lower, front section, which turned out great! I liked being able to see people’s faces on stage a little better, and we were still far enough back to turn our heads to the side to see most of the action. So, Row M, near the center aisle, were pretty perfect seats. Sight & Sound did not disappoint with Esther. The set, along with its transitions were amazing. I really like it when the transition can be done while we watch, without needing to turn lights off while people in black run around on the stage. And of course, the actors did a fabulous job of bringing the Bible story to life. The music and acting were superb!
The trip to Branson went fine, but things started going downhill after arriving to the campground. First, do you see the short limb that’s cut off on tree in the first pic? Well, the second pic shows my view of it while standing near the back of the RV. 🙁 So, we scraped up against it and messed up the decal on the front edge of the RV. <sigh> Once we got into the site without further incidents, we couldn’t get the passenger side front landing jack to work when auto leveling the RV. If it got tall enough to start leveling out, it would slip a couple of inches and get shorter again. From what we could tell, it was a mechanical issue with a stripped gear. <sigh> The campground office recommended “Fix Here” who happened to have time to stop by a couple of hours later to take a look at it. While we waited, I opened up the RV to go to the bathroom and noticed the fridge beeping. I had forgotten to fasten the bungie cord again and the door had opened up and some of the fridge stuff was on the floor. <sigh> So, that’s three things that had gone wrong in one day, with two of them being my fault. I’m actually surprised I didn’t break down, but I just picked stuff up that was still good, threw away a few things that didn’t seem worth saving, then looked up documentation for our RV Complete coverage to figure out how to get them to pay for the front landing jack repair. <sigh>
The Fix Here guy agreed the jack needed replacing and jacked us up enough to put a tall pile of wood under that edge of the RV while we waited for the part to come in. Thankfully, we were planning to stay a week in Branson anyway, so this didn’t mess up any future plans. He also agreed to grease our wheel bearings for us when he came back, which just needed to be done according to the maintenance schedule, not that there were any issues with them. And while we were in maintenance mode, I went around the RV with a caulk gun to replace messed up silicone.
He got the part in quickly and came back a couple of days later, replaced the landing leg, then took our wheels off, replaced the seals and re-greased all the wheel bearings. Meanwhile, his son crawled under the RV and greased all the wet bolts in the suspension system. While the dad had things taken apart, he noticed one brake pad was wearing thin, so he ordered a new kit for that and came back the last morning we were in town to replace it. He said the old stuff literally fell apart as he was taking it off, so it was a good thing we decided to changed it. He also double checked the level of the trailer while hitched to the truck, since he said our back tires seemed to be wearing weird and he thought we weren’t level. Turns out we are, so now he’s wondering if perhaps we have a slightly bent axle. <sigh>
Hopefully we won’t continue to have issues like these as we continue traveling, else I could see us getting tired of it a lot sooner than we would otherwise. “It’s always something” usually just means small things that we can do ourselves, not major stuff like this!
0 Comments