Branson Rocks!

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Dear Music Lovers, Well, Branson, MO is THE place! We were not quite prepared for the numerous venues & shows that can be found in this city. 125 shows are currently playing and all have Christmas shows. Even Andy Williams at 80 has his own theater & Christmas show, but we opted for Jim Stafford & his family as we could walk to it from our campground. It was good, clean comedy, lots of guitar & harmonica from Jim, and drums, piano, harp from his children 12 & 14. His wife even read a prayer and there were dancers. It was a good family show as I think they all are. We are in the Bible Belt and it has a profound influence on the type of entertainment offered. There are some little towns that we drove through that have 3 Baptist churches, along with many others. Two nights ago we stayed at a campground on the Mississippi River at a riverboat casino where you had to have an ID card to play the slots. Missouri law allows each gambler to lose no more than $500 in 2 hours...it's all computerized, hence the ID card. They also allow smoking, except on 1 deck. We walked in, got the cards, played $2 for 2 of us, couldn't breathe, and departed...is this life on the Mississippi? Today, we went to a beautiful church in Branson, Our Lady of the Lake, which had 5 tour buses drive up for the 8 am Mass; there must have been 1000 people in attendance, mostly tourists like ourselves. Only 5% of MO is Catholic so to have such a BIG church, it had been built for both locals & tourists for $6 million. We heard great music there, too. Then, we drove through The Ozarks which was nice, but then came Oklahoma...and we drove on, and on, and on across the top and we still only got half way. We did get a short stint on Route 66. All that we saw were cattle, oil wells, roads taking off across the landscape, and more land, cattle, oil wells, and our own sparsely traveled road with no cars on it. Enid,OK is where we ended up and tomorrow looks like it will be much of the same with a little bit of Texas thrown in for good measure. We are heading for Taos, NM if we can make it across OK. It's time for another oil change. Love and enjoy Advent, DWT.

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