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!
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