Thursday – April 27 – Today was a real nice day, sunny and warm. We drove around Branson, can’t believe the number of motels, theatres and restaurants, but we didn’t see one grocery store! We stopped at an outlet mall for a bit, I bought 3 pairs of socks and John bought a book – last of the big time spenders. We are definitely in the Ozarks, it is a very hilly city with lots of narrow streets. At one point we had stopped at an overlook and the woman beside me said one of the two houses below belonged to one of the Lennon Sisters – she thought is was Janet Lennon, so the picture is for you Pat.

We went to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede and quite enjoyed it. The building was huge and first we went into a large room for the pre show entertainment which was a juggler and he was very good. At one point he balanced an 8’ ladder on his chin – amazing. We then went into the arena where the show was held and the sides of the arena were tiered with a bar type table along the length of each tier and this is where we sat and had dinner while watching the show. Dinner consisted of a roll, a cream soup, a whole chicken, a slice of pork, corn on the cob, a huge potato wedge, an apple turnover and all the coffee/and/or iced tea or pepsi you wanted – and eating utensils were your hands. The dinner was excellent but far too much and the show was very good. John hadn’t realized that the show consisted of a lot of acts with horses, there also were pig races, ostrich races, and other races and it was the north against the south like in the Civil War, all in all very entertaining.