Silver Dollar City

The main reason we went to Branson was to visit Silver Dollar City, which is an early-American themed park.




It's a really beautiful park. It's surrounded by trees and flowers and little streams everywhere.
It was a hot and sticky couple of days, but we still had loads of fun.






Silver Dollar City is really neat because it's not just rides and gift shops, although it has pleanty of those too! They also had really neat shows and cool old-fashioned craftsmen and demonstrations. So you'd go ride rides until you got too hot and then you'd go find something indoors to do which was really nice. In fact, we were surprised by how many elderly people were there until we realized just how much there was to do and see that didn't involve rides.

Caroline was so brave and wanted to ride everything (which proved to be problematic once or twice)

Here we are in one of our favorite shops: the candy store! They had grandmas making the candies right there in front of you (and most importantly, giving samples!) We got to watch them make peanut brittle and fudge - yum!
We also saw pottery and glass-blowing demonstrations and it was really cool. I was too mesmorized to take pictures!

Dave and I thought this was our favorite ride: The Giant Swing. It was like one of those pirate ship rides... times ten! Usually if there was a ride that we both wanted to do, we just took turns watching the kids and riding.

One of the shows we saw was a stunt-dog show and it was really cool. These dogs could jump really high and do cool tricks like walking on their front two paws! Afterward, Caroline got to meet one of the stunt dogs. The neat thing was that all the dogs were shelter dogs that they rescued and trained.

Another thing I really liked about Silver Dollar City was that they let you bring in coolers. Most places are so stingy about "no outside food or drink" so I thought it was really great that we could bring our own snacks and lunches. But before we left on the second day we decided to experience a true vacation food. There was SO much to choose from, but we decided on a funnel-cake sundae. (Not one of us had ever had a funnel cake before, which the lady couldn't believe!)

Check that out!

Funnel Cake, ice cream, strawberry topping, and powdered sugar! Wow.

Look at her face!

We really had a good time and I'm so glad we went. Miles did as good as could be expected, until the ride home - by then he'd had it and screamed a good portion of the 6 hour drive back.
I hope Caroline is old enough to remember this trip forever, because it was a good one. I think most importantly, we discovered that we can go on a vacation. We can do it! We can pick a location, map our way there, pack up the kids and the stuff, juggle activities and a baby... We've talked about it so many times and decided it wasn't worth the cost and the hassle, but now we've had a good experience so hopefully it will happen again and again!