Adventures of a not so "newly wed.": Anniversary Trip 2012: BRANSON!!!

Russy and I had an awesome idea last year to go on a trip around our anniversary that was small and pretty inexpensive. Last year we went to Tulsa, but this year I've been begging for him to go to Branson and he agreed.

For those of you joining my blog from other parts of the country and planet. Branson is in Missouri. It started out as the Country Music Capitol kinda like Las Vegas. HWY 76 strip is where every major performer either has a performance stage or has performed on one of them. From there they added outlet malls, curio shops, Silver Dollar City (an amusement park and historical recreation of old westy type stuff), White Water (which is a water theme park), and other places to do and see things that most towns just don't offer. If you have some time after reading my blog...just google Branson and see what all there is to do. It's worth a road trip!!!

Hahaha...looking back when I first started having difficulties and wanted to redesign the trip...I should have. At first I couldn't find a place for us to stay. They had just had a tornado blow through town about a month before we decided to go. Then I purchased tickets to an amusement park for the wrong date! Finally when we get there the hotel room...wasn't all that fabulous; but we persevered....until.....I found out the amusement park we wanted to go to was fricking CLOSED the entire two days we were going to be there. This amusement park is called Silver Dollar City...it's awesome...I love it!!! I KNOW Russy will love it and it only took me five years of being together to persuade him he needed to go...we finally kick the bucket and go and ITS CLOSED!!!!! AAAHHHHH....still makes me want to scream. So we quickly had to come up with a contingency plan. Well here it is...we went to a place called Castle of Chaos. It's an eight minute ride that's in 3D. But they call it 5D because they blow air and water at you. The platform on which you sit spins, your seat moves and all the while you are listening to a story and shooting at things...trying to liberate a castle from Ghosts that will not rest.

Next we went to Ripley's Believe It or Not. We both really love that show..so it was only natural that we go check out the museum. It was actually really cool and we had a blast playing with everything in there. My better and favorite pictures are below.

From there we went to the Factory Outlet Center. Did a little shopping. Found some amazing deals....found some not so amazing deals. When leaving going for food we got lost and turned around which lead us to an amazing discovery.

On Shepard of the Hills Expressway there is a turn around/outlook point where you can choose to park and hike or just look at the scenery. At first we were just going to look, but I really thought we should hike at least the first leg which was 1.1 miles. Now, before I started my weight loss journey...this would have never been something I thought about doing...but I really wanted to do this. We had alot of fun...took some great photo's and have to say when hiking...if your going only downhill for a large portion of the hike...before you want to go on a bigger portion of the trail...make sure you can get up the other side first.

Next we had lunch at Wendy's and then went to an IMAX movie called Tornado Alley. Now if you've ever watched a show on Discovery called Storm Chasers; you've heard of this movie from Shaun Casey. It really wasn't what I though it was going to be like. It was more technical and featured a lot of another team. I'm kind of wondering if since he couldn't get a lot of the footage he wanted if he teamed with them to put the movie out just to fund more research. There were still some stunning footage of tornado's and just for that I would recommend seeing the movie.

After that we went to the Tanger Outlet mall. This mall depressed me...the Disney Store was severely lacking in Lilo and Stitch stuff and most of the other shops catered to skinny types and didn't really have any great deals. Although Russy got some great tools for REALLY great prices.

So yea...had a pretty good trip all things considered. It could have been a lot worse if I had just been allowed to throw in the towel and give up. I even tried a new restaurant called Fudruckers. It's a burger joint that was TOTALLY not what I was expecting. We'll be going back whenever we're in town...and yes...Russy says we will be going back.

Castle of Chaos and Russy in the lower right hand corner. He called me a tourist for this photo.

Outdoor Man extraordinaire...Russy on our nature hike.

Just goofing around in the wilderness.

I really really like this photo...just wish I had photoshop so I could fix the glare on my glasses lens.

You can really see it now...my husband decided on this trip to start trying his new hair-do. The straight up bed head/rocker look. Hmm...I'm still getting used to it. I kinda like it though.