November 1 - 4, 2008, Left Sudbury 7:00 AM,  -2C, Diesel $3.00 Gas $2.35

Our first stop on our 4 day run to Branson was a stop over at a Super 8 motel in Grayling, MI. We got there at around 3:30PM. The owners had no concern letting travellers spend a night in their parking lot. This motel is also part of the fuelling station they own and it was a great quiet spot right off I-75.

The next day we travelled to Gary, Indiana for a stop over at Cabellos.
We pulled into Cabello's parking lot at about 2:00 PM. Gave us lots of time to shop the store. Is it ever huge! Bought two new Cabello hats as the last one was traded for moose tenderloin in South Porcupine.
We left Cabello at 4:00 AM in order to miss the Chicago traffic and got into St Louis before noon and spent the night at Harrahs casino in St Charles. Velma got to pull a few slots with her bad arm and you guessed it, it's on the bum again. I fixed the wiring harness as the truck was not charging the RV batteries.

I have to say that, except for a small stretch of road through Chicago, Interstates 75, 190, 55 and 44 are great roads from Canada to Branson with fully serviced rest stops every 40-60 miles. These guys spend more on one side of their highways than we spend on two, and having just as cold Winters as the Sudbury area, they still manage to build roads that are smooth and last. It really makes you wonder.

November 5 - 10, 2008, arrived in Branson, Missouri, 1:00 PM, 65F, Diesel $3.05 Gas $2.05, Elev 600ft

The next day we arrived in our RV park before noon. Branson RV park is very quiet with easy access to Branson. Reasonable at $75.00 for the week full services including Wi-Fi, and the owner Ron, is a real friendly guy. We also picked up our show tickets, drove around and got a feel for distances and time.

While in Branson, we got to see two shows, the Baldknobbers and the Haygoods, both excellent variety shows.

The Baldknobbers with the hillbilly guy!

The Baldknobbers being the very first show that started it all was the better one imo, very professionally done and funny with the use of hillbilly actors. Some of the musicians and actors have been there for 30 years or more and the music and signers were first class!

The Haygoods were a family variety show originally being the first family act with 7 boys and 1 girl. They were also good and, according to Velma... pretty cute... good thing they're getting on in age all being about 17 to 28 years old now.

We also spent a few days at Silver Dollar City. Originally the location of the first settlement for this area and the first commercially operated underground caves which are still owned by a Canadian family. They were the first ones to operate the caves as a tourist attraction back in the late 1800's. The property is now leased out to Silver Dollar City which is a mega theme park and on Nov 1 they move into their Xmas season.

Velma in front of one of the original Ozark Settlements.

This property is also the location of the first town in the area (Silver-Dollar) and of the remaining buildings all are located on the SDC property. These buildings are the oldest remaining structures in the Ozarks and they are exactly at the spot they were found! The whole park is built in a similar fashion and these turn-of-the-century buildings house the stores, food outlets and the artisan shops of which there are advertised to be 100; but we only saw a couple... the glass blowers and the forger.

 The whole place is decorated with over 4 millions lights adorning the turn-of-the-century buildings and the trees. There are over 300,000 lights in one Xmas tree alone and the night shows with the Xmas songs are something to see.

The site has 5 theatres and we got to see 2 Xmas shows. A modern version of Scrooge which was very well done and a funny variety show at the "saloon".

I found it expensive. But Velma says the shows along with the cave tour are well worth the entrance fee of $50.00 per! The caves though, don't come close to the Lurays in the Blue Ridge nor the Carlsbad Cavern in NM.

Silver Dollar city production of Scrooge was as good a production as you'd expect from the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake

Branson is hilly, known for their hillbillies, and they love making fun of it (Baldknobbers). The book "Shepherd of the Hills" by Harold Bell Wright was the second best selling book in its heyday, next to the Bible. It was written in 1907 and it tells the history of Branson and what Baldknobbers are. It should be a good read for you history buffs before coming to Branson and I'll let you know once I finish it.

Silver Dollar City saloon Xmas show.

 Branson is also a busy place, especially this week. It is known as the place in America which loves to honour their armed forces. This week they expect about 65,000 veterans to show up, and will have the largest Veterans day parade in America. Oliver North is a guest speaker and all the attractions, businesses, restaurants, etc, offer huge discounts if not free entrances to all active and retired military personnel. Add that to the average 60,000 daily visitors, and it is busy.

Oh, did I forget to mention... the truck had an aneurism! The steel brake line to the rear brakes sprung a leak and then the tail pipe broke off. Got both fixed locally for a more reasonable price than I would have paid back home at a local shop called Crawfords in case anyone else needs e'm.

And, guess what... A friend of Velma's from St Catharines, Vi Wheery happened to be here on a bus trip and that was a nice visit.

Now we get ready for our next destination, Hot Springs, Arkansas.
 

November 10-12, 2008, arrived Hot Springs, Arkansas,  3:30 PM, 72F, Diesel $3.15 Gas $1.85!!!

The trip down to Hot Springs was through the east side of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, south from Branson on Hwy 65 (4 new lanes) then onto a hilly 2 lanes till we got 4 lanes close to Little Rock, AR again. On the way here we just had to stop and say hi to Helen Simpson, jr, originally from Iroquois Falls, by way of St Catharines who moved here back about 10 years ago. Helen works for an oil  service co., Schlumberger (?) and wouldn't you know it, when she started her job, her new boss was and Allan, from Iroquois Falls, his father was a music teacher at IFSHS. small world or what! 

We arrived at Hot Springs National Park campground around 3:00 PM and we'll be here for 3 nights at $10.00 per.

Hot Springs is very beautiful with it's stately buildings. The era is early 1900's and many hotels are styled after the Victorian age and the 50's styles with Californian stucco buildings here and there. bathhouse row is a treat to the eyes. Large well designed and built bathhouses of varying styles line up the long side of a city block on Main St. These are backed by the natural landscape of the hot spring mountain from where all 47 hot springs come from, and nowhere else can they be found for a hundred miles around.

Bathhouse Row is what it's called and set on a street lined with mature Magnolia trees, it sure is an impressive scene.

The interior of these bathhouses are also very impressive. At the moment, there are only 2 of these building open to the public. They are all owned by the National Park system, as the land was licensed to the various entrepreneurs and they built their businesses as seen above. But since the early 50's, the hot bath business has been on a downswing. These were prescribed by doctors the world over at one time, and advances in medicine has reduced their need. All the buildings have returned to the landowner and the Park is using one as a Visitor centre fully restored to its past glory, and a second building is also restored to it's 1912 condition and is offering hot baths in exactly the same way they were back then.

We tried a hot bath each and what an experience. Everything is exactly as it was in 1912, from the tiles floors, porcelain tub, nickel plated plumbing and marbled walls and partitions, to the beautifully sculptured statues. The smell, sounds and the people are as close to authentic as can expected.

The Hot bath experience starts with you checking in your valuable and paying your dues at the front desk. Then you are whisked to the left side for men and right side for women (segregated), into a change room with walls lines with small cubicles stripped bare naked into a white linen sheet. Next you are brought to your bath attendant (Walter was mine) who places you into an oversized cast iron bathtub and fills it with pure unfiltered and untouched hot spring water to a temperature of 105F, turns on a whirlpool agitator which looks the same as an oversized sump pump and leaves you there for about 20 minutes. Next, he gets you out of the tub, covers you with a towel and places you into a ceramic bowl, and it looks like a wall urinal, only you sit in it and it's low to the ground. There one in the picture below and next to it is the women's steam closet. Theirs have their heads sticking out of them. The men's steamer is much taller and encloses that whole body.  The low tub thingy runs water over your bottom end and is supposed to help your back... I didn't feel anything, but, after a few minutes of this, he gets you into the steam room. Wow, this thing is old. It's the size of a closet, has steel walls riveted together with enough coats of paint to surely give it 100 yrs and a plate glass roof, the kind that has the wire mesh as the safety aspect embedded in it, and the front is a marble slab frame for the steel door. All fixtures are old brass and the piping is layered with what appears to be calcium. The smell is of something I never smelled before and it must have something to do with the fact that the steam is derived from the spring water and add to that the age of the system...hmmmmm! After about 10 minutes in this steam closet you're moved onto cot where they wrap your back and your front with HOT wet towels, real hot... then they lay you down and wrap you with 2 sheets of linen so that your whole body is wrapped except for your head. After cooking there for about 15 minutes, you get the needle shower. This shower has pipes all around you (see picture above) and sprays dozens of needle sprays at your body from all directions and also from the top. It really gives you a good spraying down and after a few minutes, you get another towel and finally you get moved to the cooling down room. This room looks like a hospital ward with metal framed cots having a thin vinyl coated pad over it, all lined up on both walls. Ceiling fans do the rest, as your body lays there for about 20 minutes and cools down to room temperature.

All in all, it's quite an experience. The fact that your in rooms that have plaster falling off the ceilings, old wooden closets and stall, old nickel piping, ceramic floors, marble walls and all, it really brings you back to how it was back in the 20's. The whole thing takes about 1-1/2 hours and I'll tell you, we went to bed that night at 6:00 PM, beat, and we never budged till 7:00AM the next day.

This is where the water comes from. This is a hill behind Bathhouse Row and there are a few of these scattered all over. The Parks have tapped all 47 hot springs and collect them to the various places throughout the buildings. Most is used for the baths and heating in Winter. They also have fountains along the street and at other locations they have fountain taps for people to fill water jugs. They encourage people to drink the water as it is tested regularly and it has never changed. It's always perfectly clear, tasteless and odourless and 143 degrees F. and they do not filter it, chlorinate it or do anything to it... Pure Hot Spring Water carbon dated to be 4,000 years old. So, we filled up a 5 gal jug and are travelling with it for our morning coffee!

The architecture of the older hotel in the downtown area is mostly early 1900's and they are ornate with good street appeal. Unfortunately, Hot Springs is not as popular as it used to be and many of these buildings appear to be in disrepair. That does not mean it's not busy here in  the Summer, as it is packed tight, but not year round as it used to be. There is a huge veterans hospital built in behind bathhouse Row which is now leased to the state. This simply adds to the thinking back then that these hot spring waters were medicinally beneficial for you.

Three days in Hot Springs was nice. The weather is definitely starting to change and you can tell that Winter is mild around here. Last year they had 2 snow falls with each lasting a day. It's warmer at night and evenings. We'll be moving on tomorrow to Hope, AR... Bill Clinton's birthplace, on our way to Waco, Tx. We missed his Presidential Library in Little Rock, but we'll get it another day.