Excuses For Not Blogging - Part 1

Ah, my little blog, how neglected you are...
I have been so incredibly busy lately, it feels amazing to just wind down and actually have time to type away on this.

To begin:

On my eighteenth birthday my brother, sister, a friend and I set off at 3:30 a.m. on a road trip to Branson, MO.

                                                        (This did not occur at 3:30 a.m.)

We stopped in St. Louis on the way down and took a tour cruise on the Tom Sawyer:

 which was not something I would do again, but...yeah. It wasn't terrible. The tour guide, I might add, has not yet found her proper vocation, and I was relieved whenever she handed the microphone off to the captain.

After the cruise, we went to the Gateway Arch:

and took the cars to the top. This was an amazing experience, even though the door to get in was tiny and we, being a party of four, had a stranger thrown in with us. On the ride down, unfortunately, we were separated even further, with two in one car and two in another. My brother and I were squashed in with three men who spoke mostly some type of Indian (Asian India) dialect and whom my brother shot pictures for. But that's beside the point... I'm still supposed to be at the top of the Arch:

                                                        (View from the top of the arch)

A narrow passage greeted us at the top and we had to wait and jostle for a turn to look out the windows:

which were very small and carpeted. If you leaned over them and looked straight down, the feeling in your stomach assured you that you were about to pitch off the top of a cliff.
We took some pictures and wandered around and then took the aforementioned trip down to the bottom again.
We went to the line to watch the movie Monument to a Dream which was about the designing and building of the Arch, but discovered that we were woefully ahead of schedule and went shopping at the gift store instead.
The movie actually was very good - once we got in - and I stayed awake through the entire thing (something that can't be said about my sister and friend...).
After that, we realized we still had a bunch of sightseeing to do, and left the Arch.

Next, we traveled to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery for a free (!) tour:

  
It was actually very interesting and fun, with free soda (that is, we got soda; there was beer too, obviously) and pretzels afterwards. We saw the Clydesdales, the aging tanks, the mashing tanks, the lineup of ingredients, the old brewery buildings (which are gorgeous for a brewery), the labeling lines and took a trolley back. We took a full trolley and had to stand up and hold the bar at the top. This was not a fun experience, because every time we took a turn, stopped or went over 3 mph, the whole thing swayed precariously and my friend looked like she was about to knock me into the lap of the gentleman on the seat beside me.
All in all, it was incredibly informative and I enjoyed it thoroughly. My only regret was that it was about beer, and nothing more uplifting or wholesomely educational.

We went back to St. Louis after that, intending to tour the City Gardens:

which would have been very fun to walk through, but unfortunately, u2 was having a huge concert at Busch Stadium (for which they had torn up all the turf on the baseball field and installed this huge stage):

           (You can sort of see it in this picture I took at the top of the Arch...)

so parking was nonexistent and driving was almost nonexistent as well, due to the number of people walking to the concert. We eventually gave up and went to our hotel in Eureka.

On Monday, we drove the rest of the way to Branson, stopped at Walmart for supplies and then found our hotel and unpacked.
Then it was off to the Branson Belle Showboat, which was our first attraction:

We boarded a bit late, and this was our dinner:

                                                                      First course

                                                                        Second course

                                                     Third course - also known as dessert

The three shows on the Belle consisted of the MC Christopher James (I couldn't get a good picture of him because he moved around too much) who did a comedy/magician act. 

Janice Martin, an aerial violinist (the only one in the world, I believe), who played piano and sang soprano as well as expertising on the fiddle:

and here's one of her doing the aerial bit:

and six singers called The Showmen:

On Tuesday, we went to Silver Dollar City. I didn't take personal pictures there, so that department will be sparse. I can include, perhaps, some internet images...
We went on two rides: an extremely tame rollercoaster called Fire in the Hole (I think I would like rollercoasters if I wasn't so afraid of how I might react to them). Tame nonetheless, it had several drops that I found extremely exhilarating. :) :

and a refreshingly wet water-tube ride called Lost River of the Ozarks. I can't find a picture of it, but we were put in a tube-boat with a mother and her young son, who delighted in informing the rest of us who was going to get wet based on our relative positions in the boat and the drops in the water-course.
We also ate a small, underground buffet, which we all agreed was a decision induced by our overexposure to heat. It really wasn't worth the money we paid to eat at it.

After a bit of shopping, we headed down to Marvel Cave and had a very interesting tour.

                                                   (This is just the first cavern of the cave)

We spent the night at the Branson Meadows Cinema watching this as an overdue birthday activity:

On Wednesday, we spent most of the day at out hotel, swimming:

and playing Dutch Blitz and Canasta. Even though it was in the upper nineties we even tried the hotel hot-tub, which was a very interesting experience.

That evening we went to Kirby Vanburch's Illusion show, which we all attempted to pick apart and figure out how the tricks were done. Kirby Vanburch is a Christian and has a powerful testimony at the end of the show, which is very refreshing.

Thursday was another Silver Dollar City Day.

We arrived almost as it was opening and headed straight to the Ozark water ride again. The line was about four times shorter than it had been on Tuesday and we got a boat with another mother and her young son, who also told us when we were going to get the deluge.

I got off that ride soaked on one side, thanks to a personal wave that went down my back but touched no one else. We did a bit of shopping and then went to the Frisco Silver Dollar City Line train:

Where we saw the sights of SDC and got held up by two criminals who weren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Unfortunately, neither was our conductor, who muffed his lines by forgetting what day it was. :)

After the train, my sister, my friend and I decided to get one of those nostalgic pictures that you dress up for.
After a mix-up with dresses, we finally got into the appropriate southern belle costumes with hoopskirts and got the picture done. I don't think any of us were extremely pleased with how they turned out, but it was still a fun experience. I won't share the picture here, because, at the moment, I am observing a strict rule of not putting pictures of people on my blog - at least people that I know.

We then got a bite to eat and went to the Opera House for a tightrope act. Then we went on the American Plunge, which was wet, but amazingly fun:

then, while we were still in the company of the adrenaline rush from that we decided to go on the Giant Swing:

 The signs tacked up along the waiting line assuring us that it was natural to have your toes above your head planted no seeds of courage in our minds and when we got close enough to see what actually happened on the ride (swinging 7 stories in the air facing the sky and the 7 stories back facing the ground) did not lend any staunchness to our already faltering resolve. If there had been an exit available at the end of the waiting line, I would most likely not be relating this adventure to you.
But stuck we were, and despite my friend's adamant statements that she was going to lose her lunch, we all made it through with nothing worse than shaky legs. I must say, though, that the feeling of being weightless and  almost vertical to the ground with my head being the nearest thing to earth is one of the most terrifying and thrilling feelings I have ever experienced.

After the swing we toned things down and got down to the serious souvenir-shopping. That took forever, and by the time it was over, the park was almost closed and we opted to leave instead of getting kicked out.

On Friday we went to a song-and-dance show called Hooray For Hollywood! which took famous songs from Hollywood's greatest movies and brought them to life. It was really an entertaining display of energy and choreography.

After the show we avoided the line of performers who were signing autographs and headed to the nearest mini-golfing course, where we spent a good while getting through the 18 holes.

That evening we went to the Ozark Murder Mystery dinner theater for a show called Speak Easy, Die Hard  - which was -awful  abysmal. It is true that the cast spoke easy, but I firmly believe that the only people who died hard was the poor audience who was forced to watch it. I won't rant about it further because it's really not worth it, but I will say that I could have written a better script, my friend could have acted a better part, my sister could have cooked a better meal and my brother could have come up with better jokes and we're not even considering going into business. Plus, they had a creepy little theater with an even creepier ticket office.

On Saturday, we packed up and drove home in one straight shot.

Thus ends the chronicle of my Branson road trip.

I shall skip trying to describe my week of VBS and go on to my trip to the Creation Museum in part 2.

'Till next time,