We hadn’t made any advanced plans for Monday, but we made it up as we went along. After breakfast at McDonald’s (my first and last “Big Breakfast”), we rode the Branson Scenic Railway. The name is something of a misnomer. The ride went about 45 minutes south through dense woods into Arkansas, then stopped and backed up. There were a handful of spots with relatively long views, but mostly it was just a wall of trees. There were two long tunnels. Before we began, a young guy made a big point out of telling us he was a voice actor hired to narrate the trip—no recordings would be used. This was also something of a joke since there was very little to narrate. Here’s such-and-such a town, this tunnel is … feet long, the water in that lake is very cold. The highlight of the trip, such as it was, occurred during the return trip. A young woman entered our car and informed us that she was going to sing a couple songs. She proceeded to sing Billy Joel’s “Vienna” and half of Elvis’ “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” She sang the second half to the people sitting in the bubble on the upper section of the car. She was good, but since there was just four people in the car, it was a bit odd.
We’d been told that Historic Downtown Branson was amazing, so we wandered up one side of the street and down the other and were underwhelmed. We ate surprisingly good sandwiches at a Legendary Sandwiches, a warehouse-like joint with mythical creatures painted on the walls. We also stopped at Mr. B’s Ice Cream. The couple in front of us were handed enormous bowls of ice cream, so I specifically requested that we just get a serving about the size of a baseball. Apparently they don’t do that there. Our “single scoops” were about four scoops, and we didn’t even try to finish them.
It was now around 1:00 pm and we had nothing else to do. We headed all the way back to the condo where I took a nap while my wife bought tickets for A Tribute to Neil Diamond that night. We hadn’t planned on seeing this, but what else is there to do? The show brought back a lot of memories, but the singer insisted on singing a lot of the songs up-tempo and kept stopping in the middle to talk. There was some kind of running joke with the drummer who kept breaking into an imitation of Little Richard’s “I Feel Good” in the middle of Neil Diamond songs, which wasn’t funny the first time and was just annoying by the fourth or fifth time. The show was probably more entertaining than sitting around a condo, but it certainly wasn’t worth the money or the drive.
