Destination Branson Pt. 1: Getting There

The first post for this week is a couple of day's late because of a weekend trip.

My wife and I traveled to attend the wedding of the youngest daughter of our friends, Mark & Patty, who live in St. Louis. But the ceremony didn't take place there. Instead they hosted a destination wedding in a place I've wanted to visit for a few years now, Branson, MO. In the next few posts I'm going to be sharing with you our experiences there and impressions of the area.

But first a little back story. I grew up listening to singer Andy Williams and watching him on TV. He was my dad's favorite singer. He had at least half a dozen of his albums. So Andy Williams is one of those things that really makes me feel close to my dad.

Ever since I read about the singer Andy Williams' ties to the town in his biography I wanted to go see the theater he build in Branson. Of course he's no longer performing there (he died in 2012) but the Moon River Theater, which is an important part of Branson's entertainment scene and its history, is still there.

In addition, over the years I have learned that a lot of the singers and entertainers popular in the 60s and 70s have their own Branson shows as well.

In my first post on this blog mentioned that I live in a pretty good location because it is within a days drive of many tourist destinations.

Branson is just under 500 miles away, from us, in the Ozark mountains in the southwest corner of the "show me" state near the northern Arkansas border. On the map it looks almost directly west of us.

We left our driveway about 9:30 AM on Friday heading northwest, then, across the Western Kentucky Parkway toward Paducah, KY.
This was a route we had never traveled before so we were in for some new travel experiences.

When Paula and I are on the road we try to drive for 2 hours in between rest stops. Sometimes we do it and some times we don't. But when we do stop we try to find a nice Love's or Pilot truck stop. If there is none around we try to scout out a nice convenience  store that, hopefully has decent restrooms.

On this trip we found a couple of new stores to put on our "okay to stop" list. We found several Casey's General Stores, Signal stores and Phillps 66 truck stops that were nice. I really liked the two Casey's that we found. We even had some pretty decent convenience store pizza for a snack at one of them.

We left the bluegrass state and we drove through part of southern Illinois on our way to Missouri. Our GPS guided us through the area effected by the flooding of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This is part of the country that had been deluged with rainfall over the last couple of weeks.

We were detoured on I-57 because one of the bridges to Missouri was blocked by flood waters. It was a minor inconvenience and the roads were totally safe; but seeing the two rivers spread out to where their banks had totally disappeared took us back a bit.

Once I-57 intersected with I-55 in Missouri, it changed to state route 60. We stayed on 60 for nearly 180 miles. It snaked through the lush green hills of the Ozark Mountains. Driving it was a little daunting. Every time I found myself at the top of a steep hill, just over the peak I would see the road ahead of me unfold down into another valley and then rise once again; disappearing over the next hill. I would reset my sights and accelerate forward over the next stretch of hills. 

Finally, we reached Missouri state route 65 near Springfield and headed south on the last leg of our journey. As we drew closer and closer to our destination exit, signs of the tourist industry began to dot the scenery. Billboards and advertisements for activities and shows. Information and welcome centers reminded us of the ten miles of highway that leads into Pigeon Forge, in the Smoky Mountains.

The main road going through Branson is route 76 aka Country Boulevard. It too, looks very similar to the parkway that runs through Pigeon Forge. There are a couple of big differences though.

First there are a lot more theaters. We passed four of the more popular ones on our way to our hotel. Just like the Smokies, Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede show is there. The Dick Clark American Bandstand Theater has been on Country Blvd. since 2012.

I was excited when I saw Andy Williams' Moon River Theater.

The King's Castle Theater was at the corner of the intersection near our hotel.

We turned right off Country Blvd and headed down the Wildwood Avenue hill.

Let me take a step back and just mention the main thing that separates the Branson area from the Smoky Mountains area. That would be hills. Everything is on a hill. From here on in this post series the word "hill" will have a constant presence in my stories. Now let's get a back to arrival day.
Our hotel was downhill from the History of Fishing Museum.

The Grand Plaza Hotel was where Mark & Patty, along with their daughter's wedding party, and most family, friends, and guests would be spending the weekend. This picture was taken from halfway up the Wildwood Avenue hill. The fishing museum is in the foreground.

We had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed spending time with Mark & Patty to celebrate their daughter's wedding. We feel blessed that we were given the opportunity to be a part of the whole weekend.

I'm not going to write a hotel review in this blog. But I do have to mention something that had a negative impact on our weekend. That would be the parking situation. 

As I mentioned the hotel was on a steep hill. The front of the hotel which faced uphill toward Country Blvd. had a parking lot with spaces for only about 1/3 of the hotel guests. If you couldn't get one of those spots you had to park in the auxiliary lots behind the hotel. These were very much down hill from the hotel. In addition not only were they on a hill vertically, they were on a hill horizontally too.

If you parked on the slant of one of the auxiliary lots, you walked to the top, turned to your right and climbed 2 or 3 sets of stairs (I'd estimate about 50 to 75 steps, I didn't count them) before getting to the hotel entrance.  Here's a picture taken from the auxiliary lot.

We had to do this 3 or 4 times during our stay. Because of my drop foot condition, climbing steps is very difficult for me. Having to walk up several sets of stairs to get up to the hotel was exhausting. It made me tired and frustrated. It's an awful way to have to walk into a hotel.

With that said, overall the Grand Plaza in Branson was nice but it is an independent hotel that's in need of some updating and redecorating. There are only 2 elevators and that makes them very crowded and difficult to access during busy times of the day. And of course, the parking situation, especially for handicapped guests, needs to be changed.

The best thing about the hotel was the free breakfast it offered on the 9th floor every morning. It was a buffet with just about anything you wanted for breakfast. However it did not offer my wife's (and the rest of the world) favorite, bacon. But it was a very nice way to start each day. You could sit at a window and get a nice view of the area. 

As in any other resort area, Branson has it's share of restaurants. On our first evening there we joined Mark & Patty and their other guests for diner at a Shorty Smalls, a family restaurant serving Southern style cuisine.

The Branson location is 1 of only 3 in the country. The other two are in Little Rock, AK and Oklahoma City, OK.

The atmosphere in the dinning room we where were all seated was busy with the combination of socializing of our group and the wait staff serving about 3 dozen people at the same time.

The wall I was facing while seated next to Mark and my wife had portraits of Andy Williams with other celebrities from the 60s. It was just another reminder of the singer's connection to the town.

After dinner we went back to our hotel room and unpacked. The wedding wasn't until Sunday so we had a free day the next day. As it turned out it would be a fun and exciting one. More on that next time. Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Come back Friday for more.