Prepare yourself, the time is now September 1st and we are headed to Branson, MO from East St. Louis, IL.
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| Route 66 was our guide |
We have become absolutely terrible at making and keeping a plan. So much so that we planned for our typical travel day lunch: a stop at a rest area and doing a picnic. That was well and good until we drove past a billboard for a quirky little sub shop. And then another where it billed itself as the sub shop with the V-Dub. How could we not stop? Well, of course, Mandie did a first quick check on
Google Maps' aerial view to verify that the parking lot wasn't a trap.
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| Planet Sub |
After leaving lunch, we passed my next favorite - a sign for a Route 66 roadside attraction, the
world's largest rocking chair. Again,
Mandie did a quick check of the drive and made sure that there wasn't anything majorly in our way and we headed for it. It was located at the
Fanning 66 Outpost. The shop was pretty kitschy and full of Route 66 crap. I'll be honest- I think we gave up some mullah to them for a couple of little things. Oh, and the rocking chair was cool. Quite big- I do think it holds a world record.
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| Family Selfie |
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| Kids and a chair |
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| Just chillin' on my shoulders |
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| Fanning Outpost |
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| Fanning Outpost |
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| Nice relaxing porch |
The remainder of the drive was pretty easy. We got to
America's Best Campground before too long. All of the sites are pull-thrus but a bit on the narrow side. The parking pads themselves were mostly level, but between the sites are on a hill.
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| America's Best Campground - nice place |
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| Our site on the hill |
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| The pool was well used by the kids |
I've mentioned it before- the real reason that we were in Branson was because of the
Fulltime Families "NOT Back to School Rally." We got there a week+ ahead of the rally. It was great to get a bit of "one-on-one" and "small group" time with other families. I think the first night, we ended up down at another camper where a bunch of them sat and played with Legos. It was great to see the kids playing with new friends.
It was our first official 2-week stay anywhere. It was nice having extra time to actually relax at home and still go out and do things:
- No pictures, Mandie, Paige, and Logan went with folks from the rally to the College of the Ozarks (aka, Hard Work U) where the students work off their tuition at the school
- More no pictures, Mandie and Paige went with folks from the rally to the Titanic museum
- Still no pics, but Paige went to an IMAX movie with rally folks
- Finally pics! The 4 of us went to the "Top of the Rock" cave tour (a bit of a misnomer- there want much caving to it!)
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| All ready to go in our golf cart |
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| Our first cave |
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| The rules specifically forbid swimming, but these folks had their swimsuits on |
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| Lots of water falls |
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| LIES. All LIES. |
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| Pond/water inside a cave |
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| See that drink Paige has? We bought it at the "Bat Bar". Very overpriced. |
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| The grounds also house a golf course |
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| View of Table Rock Lake |
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| They also had a museum, but we didn't go |
- And pics again, we went to Branson Landing for a day of shopping and dinner out
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| Look at that parking job! |
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| Shoe shopping for Paige |
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| Drinks for Mandie |
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| Crawdads for me |
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| Dancing fountains |
- And, of course the rally where we were one of 40+ families; where our kids would leave to go find other kids to play with; where I ran (yes, my fat ass ran) between buckets and pretended to empty a black tank with a pool noodle; where we had an 80s prom; where we made new friends and the kids made new friends; and where people understood this wanderlust in us. And. so. much. more.
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| Pre-rally Pot Luck |
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| Road Working dads commiserate together |
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| We got our first taste of a Krispie Kreme Hot Now doughnut |
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| Connectivity & Apps Coffee session |
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| Mandie Hosted a Tweens Get To Know Each Other night |
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| Looking back at this photo, Logan said "I love her. And I love her." |
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| Taco Night! |
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| I won't lie- a little jealous of this setup. |
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| My beautiful family |
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| Parachute Ranger off of the camper |
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| My budding photographer |
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| 80s Night was a hit! |
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An amazing group of fulltime families
(Photo credit: Jason Liske) |
- We finished the week out by taking Paige to go zip lining at Branson Zipline.
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| Sissy- afraid of a little ole bear |
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| Ok, not a sissy - she's totally bad ass. No fear! |
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| I only got to see a couple of ziplines that she did, but it looked like fun! |
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| All smiles. |
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| Super-duper high up there. |
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| Look close, she's freaking waving! |
And then she stepped off of a 100' high platform for a controlled fall to the ground. Ballsy, she is.
Click for video:
I picked up a new goodie and that's my
"The Claw" awning anchor. I think I've mentioned that I use support arms for my awning. It typically lets me deploy it upon setup and not retract it until we are packing our site up. To those poles, I take a ratchet strap to a tie down point on the ground. I had been tying down to a
dog anchor but had issues in some grounds being too hard. In fact, that's exactly what had happened here in Branson. I had read about
The Claw anchors and decided to give it a shot. Longest story shortest, these things are awesome BUT don't waste your money on the
"RV Tie Down" kit; but the anchors separately. The kit comes with a crappy hammer and crappier straps; but the storage bag is cool.
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| Kit Contents - anchors, nails, straps, hammer, and bag |
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| Anchor in use |
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| Anchor and support pole in use |
The other excitement was of an Unlimited Data plan named OmniLynx out of the Huntsville, Alabama School System. Unfortunately, it was a wild violation of their terms & conditions to open it to the public and Verizon shut them down. But, I got almost 3 months of super cheap unlimited internet.
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| The holy grail- unlimited data |
A bit of surprising fun- Mandie volunteered us to be the "official rally photographer". I have a Flickr album of 400+ photos from the event. We aren't in all of them (or really a whole many); but you can see how much fun we had.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougsetzer/albums/72157658506807831
By the time our departure day rolled around, we were genuinely sad to go. But, the wheels keep on turning on this house of ours and we made our way to Kansas City to visit with Mandie's aunts, but that's a blog post for another day.
As usual, this is just a smattering of picture. There are
many, many more pictures on Flickr from our time in Branson (in addition to the rally pictures above).
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