Roadtrip to Branson, MO - Day 1 & 2

We headed out bright and early last Saturday morning for our first big road trip as a family of 5! Kyler has never been outside of Texas and Levi doesn't remember leaving Texas, he was 2 when we moved here from South Carolina. Since Lex started with his current job 6 years ago, planned vacations have been hard to do. We are so thankful that the coronavirus quarantine didn't start until after we got back. We got lucky!

The day before, I had the grand idea to create binders for each of the kids with activities for the drive. Their favorite was the License Plate Game. Each time we saw a license plate from another state, we colored it in. By the end of the trip, we had probably 30-35 states colored in! They also had journal pages to record the trip, etc. They loved it!

Finally seeing some mountains, so pretty!

We rented a condo, just a few minutes outside of the main strip in Branson on Lake Taneycomo. It was a great mix of nature and tourism! 

The first thing we did was hit up the indoor pool. After a full day of driving we needed to get some wiggles out. Plus, we brought the kiddos swim flippers that Santa had bought them. They were super excited to get a chance to use them for the first time!

The first day we started exploring and decided with the beautiful sunny day ahead, we needed to spend the majority of the day outside in case the next day it did rain, like predicted. 

We all wanted to do the Mountain Coaster....so  off we went! Katelyn was old enough to ride alone, so the boys each tagged with us parents. It pulled you up to the top and then each car had a break on it, so you could control the speed down the mountain. I was surprised at how fast and scary it really was. We all loved it! And wanted to go back at night, when they had it all lit up, but unfortunately we didn't have the time. We highly recommend it though!

We also explored Table Rock Lake Trail,  which was beautiful and lead to the dock for the Branson Belle.

We loved exploring. And even did some pretty extreme rock climbing.....

....Ok, they were only a few feet off the ground, but we laughed making these photos look like they were climbing high rocks!

Then we headed down near the Fish Hatchery (which was closed this day) and the Table Rock Dam. We hiked around and enjoyed just being outside near the water. 

That night we had reservations to the Dolly Parton Stampede (which is a similar set up to the Medieval Times in Dallas). They had all the horses in stalls along the walkway to the front door, so we had to take a pic with our favorite.

The show consisted of horse competitions, history of the first settlers and Indians, chicken runs, pig races, a buffalo sighting, dog races,  roping (see below Katelyn was chosen as a kid roper), etc. Our side of the auditorium's team didn't win, but we had fun cheering! 

 We were served a four course meal during the show, including our own personal cornish hens. Kyler even liked the "chicken"! 

Day 2 of vacation was a success!

Day 3

Monday morning we went to a Travel Club meeting (which is how we got all our show tickets at a discount). We had to sit through an hour and a half talk trying to get us to buy into their travel club. We opted not too and just got our discounted tickets. It was a rainy, cloudy day, so we headed to the Grand Country buffet for lunch, which was next to the indoor putt putt place we had free tickets for. 

After lunch we headed over to putt putt but realized they had given us tickets for the outdoor putt putt by accident, luckily the lady at the ticket booth let us play anyway and then even gave us an extra round for free too. Even though it was rainy, the place wasn't crowded at all, probably because most spring breaks weren't happening quite yet. Lucky for us!

After Putt Putt we headed to downtown Branson, where I had read they have a free trolley you can hop on and off of to get around. So that's what we did. We hopped on and got a feel for what was around, then hopped off and did a little touristy shopping. We stopped at Dick's 5 and 10, which was huge. The kids all had a little spending money for souvenirs, so they shopped!

For dinner we went to Pasghetti's, which was delish. Especially since we were going full-carb and not trying to stay on our keto diets. Bring us the lasagna, manacoti, and spaghetti!

Levi was not in the mood for a picture. He ate too many breadsticks ;)  This place was cute cute cute. It felt like we were sitting on the streets of Italy, with a boardwalk/carousel and trolley on the top floor. We all loved it

Day 4 - Dogwood Canyon

The day started off pretty cold, but it wasn't raining so we ventured over to Dogwood Canyon Nature Park. It was about 40 minutes away, but definitely worth the drive. It's owned by Bass Pro and everything was beautiful and so well maintained. We got there before the crowds luckily, rented bikes for the whole family, and started down the paved paths. Our first time ALL being able to ride on two wheels and go up and down the hills! It was a blast, definitely a highlight activity for all of us!

We were surprised to see that we rode all the way to Arkansas! We had wanted to stop at all the state signs along the drive to Missouri, but they all seemed a bit too dangerous to stop for along the highway, so we made sure to take pictures along our bike ride instead.

We made it to the final double waterfall at the end of the trail! 7 miles round trip, not bad for a 5 year old that's been riding a two wheeled bike for less than a year. 

We loved stopping along the way to check out the water falls, caves, trout, etc. After we reached the end of the trail, we just booked it straight back to the entrance since we'd seen all the sights already. 3.5 miles straight and we all made it in record time. There were a lot more people by then too, so it was necessary to keep to the right and not run into the other bikes, but we survived and everyone had a blast. We turned in  our bikes and explored this treehouse that was featured on the show "Treehouse Masters". It had a trapdoor from the inside to a hideout underneath too, we had to pry them away to go grab lunch, it was already 2:00 by this time and we were starving. 

Inside the main building, they had Indian Artifacts, friendly bears, a gift shop, and a restaurant. 

We stopped for lunch at Pizza by the Chef, which I had read about in advance. We had the place to ourselves, it was delish! From there we headed to Inspiration Tower (another freebie for doing the Travel Club presentation). Where we met the owner of Diskey the Frisbee Dog (he's on youtube and possibly will be on America's Got Talent this spring). He was a nice man who worked at Inspiration Tower. Great views, but glad we didn't pay $10/person just to ride an elevator! :)

We rested at home for a bit, grabbed some dinner at a great little hamburger/BBQ joint, and then went to our next show we had tickets for, Hamner's Unbelievable Variety Show. We had front row seats!! Thanks to the travel club presentation peeps! Levi and Lex got called up on stage during the pre-show. Lex had to "name that tune" for a TV show, but was given the only theme song he didn't know (he says). Levi had to compete against an older gentleman by being the first to stack 5 big bolts using a chop stick, he won!! And got a magic coloring book. So fun! 

The show was great.....a lot of typical magic tricks....sawing the lady in half, slight of hand stuff, etc. Plus an aerial cirque du soleil type act, impersonators, singing, etc. It was definitely entertaining. And no one fell asleep, which I kind of expected Kyler too since it wasn't over to 10 pm.