Tuesday, June 23, 2009

A day at Branson

We awoke to a steamy sunny morning here in the ABC. Self proclaimed America’s Best Campground. Well if they think so. This place has gravel pull thru sites that are stair stepped up the hills, while the roads are blacktop.

The bathrooms are clean and air conditioned. The main office and store is really nice, and has lots of stuff.

So there is nothing wrong with this park, but it won’t hold a candle to Mesa Spirit from Arizona last winter, or the Buckhorn Lake park in Kerrville, Texas where Howard and Linda are holding this years RV Dreams rally in October.

But we are comfortable here and it works as far as being right close to town and the attractions.

But tonight we went out to see Ben’s Core of Engineers park over on the West side of the lake. Old 86 campground. This was about a 25 mile drive from where we are here North of Branson.

I took this picture from his picnic table. This looks back at the dam on the East side. This was taken with the blackberry phone, so its only a 3.2 Mp resolution and the phone has little for a lens.

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This was a zoom at dusk which gave up much more of the resolution, I didn’t have to begin with.

The Branson Belle stern wheeler, is a true stern wheel propelled boat.

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I say that but could not find anywhere to back up that statement. They say it will go 11 mph and that seems quite fast unless there are helper propellers underneath. Here is their web site. This is a dinner and show boat. One wonders why bother going out on the water, if your are in a theater enjoying a show. They have talking dogs at the end of the show.

Over all it was overly hot today ( mid 90’s), and we could hardly leave the AC in the car. We drove all over the area, but did not see nearly as many vacationers as we did two years ago.

We have been told that most all of the headliner stars that made Branson their home, have left for greener places. The shows are now second line entertainers, who are good but not nearly the attraction as before. The stars still do show up in the fall and at Christmas time

The shopping centers were poorly crowded, or not crowded at all. It may be the economy, or lack of big name entertainers or just overall sentiment to not spend money like before, but something is missing here.

The traffic is not jam packed as it was before, and Silver Dollar City had many empty parking lots, and no line to enter.

We are discussing a boat rental for tomorrow, so we will see how that comes along in its planning.

Retired Rod

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