A week ago today, we were on our way to the Table Rock lake area near Branson, Missouri.
Branson, Missouri while a super popular vacation destination is not my favorite place to go. At all.
Every year when I was a young child into my teen years, our family vacation was a resort on Table Rock lake. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, I swore we would go DIFFERENT places when I had kids so we have done that. This was only our 2nd, maybe 3rd family vacation to the area.
So if you don’t like it why’d you go there? We went because J wanted to go ride the roller coasters at Silver Dollar City. Actually, he was looking at the roller coasters in Ohio, I forget what city…where a big amusement park is located? However, time restraints made us reel in our plans to what was nearby.
A well-kept secret: Branson is not a budget friendly vacation! Maybe if you go and stay at a resort on the lake and do nothing else but even then, some of those resorts can get pricey. Ours was not. And ahem, you get what you pay for…
Tuesday:
Our trip down there was fine. It’s only about a 3 1/2 hour drive from KC. This is nice especially with older kids/teenagers/young adults who aren’t excited about leaving the house at 7 in the morning. We didn’t leave the house until probably 10 or 10:30.
I laughed a bit as when I went on my girlfriends weekend we stopped at a nice restaurant and then, toured Truman’s birthplace. When we went as a family, we ate at Wendy’s and then, browsed a shoe store (I’d forgotten my water shoes so there was a purpose).
We arrived at our destination around 3:30. In some ways it was exactly what I expected. In others, it was not. 
The screened porch was nice and I spent most my time there reading my books. I didn’t end up needing the forgotten water shoes because the resort had no shore line! And it was such a steep walk down to the dock that none of us braved it in anything less than our tennis shoes. We did spend a bit of time fishing on Tuesday night though we caught nothing but a few very small perch.
We looked into renting a boat for one of the days but ultimately decided against it. My husband said he could borrow his brother’s boat and take the kids fishing around here for free. (Boat rentals in this area were crazy high! Usually resorts have boats for rent but the one boat we saw at the resort wouldn’t have safely held 4 people.)
Wednesday
We ventured into Branson on Wednesday. Since I was a little upset and disappointed over a few things, my husband surprised me with a trip to:
The Butterfly Palace 
I do love butterflies and we all enjoyed this. Can’t remember the name of the butterfly pictured here:
I have a video of the butterfly below in flight but no idea how to get it on here but you can click on this link to see what the wings look like spread out: blue morpho: 
For Daniela from Danahandmade:
Can’t remember exactly what it was called, some sort of geode.
After the Butterfly Palace, G was especially happy as we stumbled across a Steak and Shake so ate lunch there. We used to have one near us but it closed down and now the closest one is about a 40 minute drive.
Then, it was on to:
Branson Landing
This is essentially a huge shopping area along Lake Taneycomo. None of it existed when we used to go to Branson when I was a kid. It’s so built up now. However, I still think Lake Taneycomo is beautiful! And honestly, kind of prefer it to Table Rock Lake. It’s a cold water lake where the main fishing is for trout. 
There’s a walkway where you can walk along the lake. And they have fountains that put on a little show every hour starting at noon. Again, I have a video but no idea how to get it from the phone to here. Maybe I’ll mess with trying to figure it out later.
Otherwise, it’s basically like any other overpriced outdoor shopping place you’ve been with the brick sidewalks and expensive restaurants. We were trying to go the Dicks 5 & 10 which is an iconic downtown Branson store but my husband got mixed up and we went to the “dime” store in the landing instead. They are not the same!
After those two adventures, we returned to our cabin and had some down time before a less than successful dinner I cooked there. Then, we retreated to our various spaces, mine being the screened porch where I read until dark.
Hello, my friend. I am sorry that parts of your trip were disappointing. We have had the same. But reading on the porch sounds lovely. I think I would be there most of the time!
Thank you. Yes, reading on the porch was very nice and that’s exactly where I spent the majority of my time.
Jean, thank you for your honest vacation report. Do you know how refreshing it is that you don’t exaggerate things? Has there ever been a perfectly flawless vacation? I find those butterflies very beautiful, and reading on the veranda… that would truly be a vacation! Sending love from the Netherlands and a virtual hug.
Thank you! I always get annoyed with the blog posts where everything looks so perfect so try to stay real around here. This vacation was certainly not flawless, the kids actually ranked it in our bottom 3 of vacations, but it had some nice moments. Perhaps we’ll call it a character building type vacation.
I really enjoyed reading your holiday diary. Thanks so much for the pictures. It looks like a particularly beautiful place to me. I can imagine how nice it was for you to enjoy reading outdoors.
And thank you from the depth of my heart for your wonderful surprise, for thinking of me when you saw that wonderful geode!
Thank you! It was nice to sit on the screened in porch and read. Of course I immediately thought of you when I saw the geode 🙂 Hope you are having a great weekend so far.