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Explorer

Dec 18, 2016

Trip to the Midwest Truck Campers & Family Christmas Party

I started the year with high hopes that we’d get to take a couple nice long trips in the camper. Wrong! But I did get to take a couple short trips. The last was to attend the Midwest Truck Campers and Friends Christmas party on November 30 through December 4 at Branson, MO. The wagonmasters for this event have provided a writeup on their website. So I’m not going to cover the goings on at the campground but will only report on traveling to and from the event and excursions we made while at the event. Lots of photos but they’ve been resized.

The event was to start off with a Wednesday supper so we started our trip as the skies started to lighten that morning. Several hours later we drove over the Mississippi River on I-55 in the northwest corner of Tennessee and entered the Land of Cotton. Wait … since when is Arkansas the Land of Cotton? Amongst the fallow fields the DH saw a cute little farmhouse we can buy and fix up if we win the lottery :-)

After eight hours of driving we were getting close to our destination but the DH needed one last potty break. Never pass up a clean outhouse! But we made it to Branson with enough time to stop off at an overlook with a view of the town before settling into the campground where, for once, truck campers outnumbered the other types of rigs.

The next day the DH and I explored Branson. We cruised the main strip along Hwy 76 but didn’t see anything we wanted to stop at. After grabbing some lunch, we headed downtown to check out Dick’s 5 and 10 store. It was unbelievable how much stuff was crammed in there, some of it items I hadn’t seen in years! So I got a start on my Christmas shopping.

On the way back to the campground we stopped again at the overlook where I took a few more photos that I could stitch into a panorama.

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To be continued …

Truck Campers

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GoinThisAway
Explorer
Dec 18, 2016
On Friday we joined some of the group on the short drive to Top of the Rock near Ridgedale. This facility was developed by the owner of Bass Pro shops, Johnny Morris. We bought tickets for the Lost Canyon Cave and Nature Trail golf cart tour and the Ancient Ozarks Natural History Museum.

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The group loaded into four golf carts and drove 2.5 miles along a path with some interesting scenery including stream crossings, waterfalls, covered bridges, and a drive-thru cave. The sound of a pump running at the bottom of the valley confirmed my suspicion that the waterfalls weren’t entirely natural. Not surprising since it had been a dry fall. But they were pretty nonetheless.

After the golf cart tour we caught a shuttle up to the Ancient Ozarks Natural History Museum. It is housed in the basement of the lodge at the, ahem, top of the rock.

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I was expecting a small collection of artifacts but found instead 35,000 square feet with thousands of tastefully displayed items. The first rooms contained exhibits on a few of the more spectacular prehistoric animals that once populated the area. How about a pig that stands taller than a man and a bird that ran down and ate horses!

Next were many rooms with displays of Native American items. Stone weapons, painted pottery, bone tools, shell ornaments, beaded clothing, and more. One display described how archeologists scrambled to locate, record, and remove some of the items before they were covered by the waters of a man-made lake.

The DH wonders if the painting on the right was the inspiration for Tonto in the Lone Ranger movie remake.

I marveled at the hours of work that adept hands put into knapping arrowheads, beading cradleboards, and adorning buffalo skins with porcupine quills.

The next room featured items related to the history of the American West including Buffalo Bill Cody and Roy Rogers. They were interesting but I didn’t see how they fit in with Ozark history. Maybe if I’d had time to read more of the placards I’d have learned the connection but by this time it was getting late and I was skimming through the displays.

To be continued …