Tony and Janet left while I was showering this am!!!  They are on their way to meet up with the Tennants in Lincoln where they will all continue there vacation into the Dakota’s and then westward bound until the arrive back in California later this month- Drive safe guys and THANK YOU for coming to Branson, we had so much fun.

Also, many have asked about Amy in Santa Barbara.  She is safe and sound!  The town of Isle Vista and the College are west of Highway 101 and basically in a swamp so I don’t usually worry about the fires other than the air quality.  Amy says she could see the flames and they were huge, as they are across the bay from downtown where the fire was causing so many evacuations. 

Amy didn’t take any photos so I had to find one to make the story more interesting.  Actually most of the photos I found on Google were quite frightening.  It amazes me how close to the downtown the fire reached and how many people were affected by this latest firestorm.  This is the third one in less than one year within 10 miles of Amy’s home!  I hope the weather stays cool until after we are there in June so we can enjoy our last long trip to Santa Barbara.  We will be there on June 11!

My Mother's Day gift

Hope all my mom friends had a wonderful Mother’s Day.  Mine was pretty darn good considering both of my kids and 1500 miles away and my mom too!  I got to have long conversations with all and do some catching up.  Our friends, Janet & Tony are still here visiting so Paul & Tony made us a wonderful steak dinner and then we went to a show.

My other gift - can't wait to try it!

The show we saw was in the Oakridge Boy’s Theater featuring Colin Raye.  He put on a pretty good show with lots of his hits.

Colin Raye in Concert

Good Bye Eddie and Peg, we are going to miss you!

Branson is getting a brand new airport to encourage more people to come here!  Today is the opening celebrations with an airshow including the US Airforce Thunderbirds so we decided we better go.  Being the good citizens we are we parked in the lots and rode the buses to the show- thought we were smart and saving on fuel, NOT!  Branson is not really prepared for crowds and traffic is not a priority.  The buses were in the same traffic as the cars, on a 2 lane road for 8 miles out to the new airport.  The airport has been built with private funding and is in the beautiful Ozarks about 8 miles from town with only one road in, and it is a country 2 lane road!  We got to ride a school bus for about 2 hours just to get to the airport, then we spent $18 each to get onto the grounds just to spend $10 on a burger and water and another $6 for an ice cream cone! 

Not the highlight of the day!

Tandem Parachuting

B-2 Stealth bomber

Military propeller planes

5 of 6 F16 Jets

We were woken up this morning by the sirens and buckets of rain along with lots of wind.  Many people in the park took shelter in the bathrooms which is the only building on the property that may withstand a tornado.  As you know RV’s and mobile homes are useless in a tornado.  Being from California none of us are smart enough to be scared so we hung out in the Tennants’ rig and watched the weather reports.  Paul was out in the rain with his umbrella!  There were no tornados reported in the area and all was safe by 9 am!

After we survived the tornado warning we went to the first of the two shows we were attending today.  We saw Shoji Tabuchi in the morning with front row seating.  He is an amazing violin player from Japan who loves country music!  This was an amazing show and our favorite so far here in Branson. 

Later in the evening we all attended the show SIX which Paul and I thought was a pretty good show before Shoji and had already seen it twice.  This time was a bit of a let down as our seats were pretty far back and it was hard to get the full effect. Oh well!

Home early and good bye to the Tennants who are leaving tomorrow am for Lincoln Nebraska for Peggy’s family reunion picnic.  We are going to be lonely when our friends are gone.

Today was an especially busy day; Tony got up and played 18 holes of golf; Janet & I went to see the Platter’s all before noon. 

The Platter’s put on a really good show.  There were only about 40 people in the theater and we got front row seats!  We got lots of attention and were personally sang to on more than one song.  The performance was complete with dancing in the aisles and of course the Locomotion!

The afternoon was beautiful and we decided to scrap our plans of driving around and instead spent the afternoon on the lake.  This was Paul & I first time out on a boat also as it has either been too cold or rainy.  Today was beautiful and we had a great day.

Soaking up some Sunshine

We brought some lunch and of course a few beverages.  Paul was our captain and Tony & Eddie were incharge of retrieving litter from the lake.

Captain Paul

Whatcha got Tony?

Another great day!

This is so exciting, we have visitors again.  The Tennants & Kings arrived on Monday, May 4 around 6 pm after traveling over a week across the country just to see me!   We spent the evening catching up and enjoying some warm weather for once.

Tuesday we spent the day planning our week and a trip to Walmart to restock the liquor cabinets of all 3 of us!!! It also poured rain all day and so it made it hard to get out and enjoy Branson.

Wednesday we finally got out to a show, Yakov the Russian Comedian.  He was pretty funny and we got to share the Branson style of entertainment with our friends.  I think everyone was surprised by the large amount of time spent telling us how great America is!!!!

Wednesday dinner was with the other workampers for a Hawaiian Potluck.

My friends

Duke got to come to the party but was not impressed with his seat nor the decorations.

This is so much fun having friends here.  We spend most evening either just talking and laughing.  One night we played a game the we will call Quarters cause no one knows the name!  Eddie won and took home 4 extra dollars.

Not much new happening this week; Duke was sick, it rained everyday, and we were tired from our Talladega adventure.  Today we made a trip to Walmart and replaced the printer we broke on our way to Talladega.  We took a pretty windy road and it fell off the shelf!  The road was beautiful but we were not prepared for it – we had stuff flying around in the RV, stuff that sat there all the way from California to Arizona and then to Branson. 

The weather here has been rainy all week and it seems like it is never going to stop!  I figure when we leave on June 1 to return to CA it will get beautiful and stay that way the rest of the summer.  It is definitely green here and if it would quit raining I bet everything would be blooming and beautiful.  For everyone that is not sure California (San Jose especially) has the best weather, believe me you can’t beat it.  There are a lot of great reasons to be here and the other places we have been but the weather is not it!

How do two people who are living in their RV and traveling throughout the US spend their 25th wedding anniversary?  DRIVING!!!!

We left Memphis around noon and wanted to get back to Branson and to Duke before dark.  We made it and Duke was very unhappy to see us!  It turned out he had been pretty depressed since yesterday and as soon as I saw him I knew he was sick, not depressed!  He had infected ears and a fever.  Dogs with long floppy ears are susceptible and this was his first ones.  He was in a good amount of pain for 2 days.  Anyway when we got home there was no way I was leaving him again to go to dinner and I was tired anyway.  We decided to go to a local joint that Paul had been trying to get to since we had arrive in Branson, Billy Bob’s Diner.   Definitely a local dive with great milk shakes and burgers.  More like a first date than a 25th anniversary but we were together and I guess that is what counts!