We took a mini family vacation to Silver Dollar City at the end of September. Steve had never been to Branson...and he still hasn't. We stayed on Table Rock Lake about 30 minutes away from Branson, and only went as far as Silver Dollar City. We stayed so far away because we slept in a caboose! It had two sets of bunk beds (the girls each slept on the bottom) and a queen bed up in the lookout (for us). It also had a love seat, TV, table, mini kitchen, and very tiny bathroom. It was also right on the lake and dock with a sun deck, slide, and rope swing. Steve was even more in love with it than the girls. He is convinced we should live in a caboose now. It was pretty tight quarters...and that was with two little ones. I am not convinced. It was an awesome place to visit, though, and I would definitely recommend Caboose Junction to others. However, the owners are going to take a year or so off with no definite plans to reopen. :( I'm so glad we got our trip in this fall!
Hannah LOVED going up the steps to the queen bed
Dinner on our porch looking out to Table Rock Lake
Ahhhhh! On the sun deck
Funny horrible story. We packed up the girls and drove the 30 minutes to Silver Dollar City the next morning. I wanted to be there right when it opened, but we were about 10 minutes late. "No big deal," I said, "It's not like we are an hour late." As we see the sign to turn off for Silver Dollar City, we both realize that we thought the other person had grabbed the tickets. Wonderful. But of course I was very pleasant about it set a great example for our kids about handling disappointment. Okay, I pouted. Sigh. I'm still working on being a grown-up. We finally made it....an hour and a half after we started...with Hannah feeling carsick from the hilly roads. Not a great start to the day.
This is a bad picture, but it was the only ride that Olive really liked.
Of course there were lots of other things she liked. Both girls loved this place where you could shoot water and foam balls.
You could also suck up the balls with these tubes. Olive and I really liked these. Steve didn't understand. He made some jokes about girls liking to vacuum.
Olive did not enjoy the butterfly ride. Or the spinning teacups. And none of us enjoyed the water ride that Steve made us do. It was like the Fury of the Nile at World's of Fun. Everyone got soaked and there was a lot of screaming...from all of the girls.
So it ended up Hannah and I riding most of the rides, while Steve and Olive played in the sandboxes, climbed in treehouses, and ate ice cream and kettle corn.
Hannah was very proud to be tall enough to ride some rides on her own. She got in the front car for her first time on a roller coaster. It was her favorite and she rode it about 10 times. Steve asked to ride with her. She said, "Well, you can wait over there and watch me. Or you could ride in another seat."
Hannah and I did REAL roller coasters, too. My favorite was
Powder Keg. Hannah had no fear waiting in line (as opposed to me worrying about it and almost chickening out when I first rode a roller coaster....at about 14), but she was not too happy when it started. It was intense and I screamed most of the time. I asked Hannah what she thought after it was over: "I was too scared to even scream. We are NOT doing that again." Then she went back to the little roller coaster for a few more turns.
While in Silver Dollar City, we also went to the girls' first cave:
Marvel Cave. It is one of the largest caves in Missouri and has one of the largest entry rooms in North America. They flew 5 hot air balloons in there at once! It also has about 700 stairs on the walking cave tour. Hannah did them all. Olive...not so much. Both girls really loved the cave and didn't complain at all about the one hour walk.
We visited during the Harvest Festival so there were lots of woodworkers, blacksmiths, glass blowers, etc. Watching the glass blower was definitely our favorite.
On the second day of Silver Dollar City, we watched a horse show and stunt show. I wasn't really planning on the stunt show, Hannah just said she wanted another show after seeing the horses. So I didn't know one of the stunts was a man catching on fire! Both girls started screaming and we had to have along talk about stunt people and fire safety.
The girls loved Grandfather's Mansion that was a fun house with crooked rooms and mirrors. We walked through several times.
Olive loved the petting zoo!
And everyone loves Dippin Dots!
It was our first time skipping naps...and for two days in a row! There were a few cranky moments, but it was much better than expected. Lots of good family vacation memories. It was 4 hours of driving there and back. The girls slept for some of that time, but when they were awake we tried our best to be annoying parents. We said things like "Girls, look out that window. See that big hill over there? What about that tree?" We also turned up the music and tried to start a family dance party. They looked at us like we were crazy. They preferred lots of games of I'm Thinking of an Animal (Hannah) and I Spy (Olive). We are already thinking about more trips we can do this fall.
