Traveling the USA Part II

Another long day of driving as we continue to head East. We drive 265 miles from Branson, Missouri to St Louis, Missouri. We're staying at the St Louis RV Park. It's a RV park that's actually in the city of St Louis, so we take our 53' rig through town. I phoned them and they gave me very good directions to get through town, but it's a little scary to me to be driving in such a large town and not being familiar with the roads. The directions the host gave us are great and we make it to the RV park with no problems. The directions keep us on nice wide roads with nice wide turns through town.

The RV park is in an industrial area of the city and is simply a parking lot for RVs, with water, electric and sewer hook-ups. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to stay here, but the hosts are very friendly and the best part is that they have a nice swimming pool! It is HOT HOT HOT again today.

We set up the trailer, start the air conditioner going and then head downtown to buy tickets for tomorrow's St Louis Cardinal baseball game (we're still trying to see all the major league baseball parks). The baseball park is only 5 minutes from the RV park, so Jere drops me off, I buy the tickets and we head back to the campground. I make dinner while Jere and Joe go for a swim. We eat dinner in our bedroom--the coolest room in the 5ver. Then we all head to the pool.

No one else is in the pool so we have it all to ourselves. We swim for awhile and then head back to the 5ver for an early bedtime.

Today we explore Branson, Missouri. We begin by driving down the Branson "strip". It's a crowded two lane road that goes through the center of town. It is lined with theatres, motels, restaurants, miniature golf, etc; in other words, a real tourist trap town. Only the traffic is horrible since the main road is only 2 lanes.

We spot a Krispee Kreme shop! We each have two donuts for a morning snack and then continue our drive around town. We drive out past the Silver City amusement park to the Branson Lake. There's no place to really walk near the lake so we continue on our drive back through the traffic of Branson and head to Branson Landing. We walk around this new area of shops, and decide to have ice cream for lunch. Too hot for anything else. So we go to the Marble Slab ice cream shop and eat our "lunch" by the water.

Branson has a Vanity Fair outlet so we head over to the outlet. It is a really small outlet but we find Joe some shorts; he's outgrowing his clothing.

There are very few shoppers at the outlet and the cashier said that the number of tourists has been really down this summer.

There are so many shows in this little town; I'm not sure how some of them can stay in business. Plus they are building more theatres! Most of the shows are country music oriented, but very few shows have 'big name' stars. Again, I don't know how some of these theatres can stay open. Plus, the roads around here are way too small to handle the traffic now; how would they handle a summer with lots of tourists and even more theatres??? I have to say that I like our campground, but I do NOT like the town of Branson.

Anyway, it's hot, so we head back to the campground for a quick swim before getting ready for the Branson show we decided to see: Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.

We need to be at the Dixie Stampede at 4pm to pick up our tickets, so we head over there and wait in line for our tickets. Lots of people here. This is supposedly the most popular show in town. It includes dinner and does NOT allow any pictures to be taken inside, so no pictures. They do take our picture and offer to sell it to us, but we decline.

The food is good and the show is enjoyable -- not sure that it is worth the $, but we're glad we went to see it. We probably would not go to see it a second time. Joe and I did enjoy the pig races and the ostrich races. The rest of the show (mainly horses) was okay.

It's been a long, hot day so we head back to the campground after the show (took a long time to get out of the parking lot onto the small two-lane road) and Joe & Jere watch the very long Baseball All Star Game on TV.

More driving today. We pack up and leave the Elk City Lake Campground for our 200 mile drive to Branson, Missouri.

We had planned to stop at the nation's first Bass Pro Shop in Springfield, Missouri, but the fish museum portion of the store is closed due to renovations, so we decide to skip it and drive straight to Branson. Too bad, we had heard that the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield is quite a site to see.

We stop at America's Best Campground (the name of the park). It's hot, so we decide to set up the 5ver and head straight to the swimming pool. After swimming, we have dinner, study the descriptions of all the shows in Branson (there must be close to 40 different shows in Branson to choose from), make reservations for tomorrow's Dolly Parton Stampede Show, and then relax around the RV park for the rest of the evening.

We sleep late and get a late start for our drive across the remainder of Kansas. We take smaller two-lane roads instead of highways and see some interesting sites as we drive through the small towns, including this artwork beside the road:

We drive around 275 miles and stop near the border of Kansas and Missouri at Elk City Lake State Park. We drive slowly through the entrance to the campground--there is a gate across the right lane of the road saying "High Water". The campground is open; the volunteer at the registration office says that there was a lot of flooding in the park and the water has been slowly receding. Part of the campground was underwater so he directs us to park in the meadow section of the campground.

We spend the evening relaxing, making phonecalls and then take a walk around the park. Nice state park, but the lake is still several feet above it's normal level.

Long day of driving as we start to head home to Pennsylvania.

We get up early and drive 375 miles from Alamosa, Colorado to Dodge City, Kansas: the Gunsmoke RV Park. Jere and I appreciate all of the references to the old television show Gunsmoke, but Joe never heard of the show. When we register for the campsite, the cashier tells us to "get outta Dodge by high noon" tomorrow--Jere and I smile.

We had hoped to swim in their heated pool after the long drive, but the weather is cool today, 15 degrees below normal. Plus it's windy, so too cold to swim. They didn't even bother opening the pool today. Oh well...

We set up, have dinner and then head into Dodge City. We look at some of the statues, including a longhorn statue to commemorate the cattle drives that were made from Texas to Dodge City where the cattle would be loaded onto trains

and a statue of Wyatt Earp, their famous 'old west' sheriff who tried to keep the law in this rowdy cowtown.

I was anxious to see their famous Santa Fe Trail mural, but it wasnt' quite as grand as I expected. The Santa Fe Trail passed through Dodge City (there's a place west of town where the trail's wagon wheel ruts can still be seen)

Dodge City also has a "Trail of Fame" with western stars' names in the sidewalk cement. They must have had the stars of the old television show Gunsmoke come to town and sign their names in the cement.

We then stop to see the longhorn steers that the town has at Longhorn Park. I'm not sure why, but I just think these cattle with really long horns are fun to look at :-)

We also drive a few miles east of town to see the Coronado Cross statue outside of town past Fort Dodge.

The cross was built several years ago by the city to commemorate the explorer Coronado's crossing the Arkansas River. Dodge City tourism claims this is the location of the first Christian service in this area of America.