I never knew Branson could be THIS exciting!!! Are we there yet??? Night 1

We had decided that we should go somewhere for Easter this year.  We wanted it to be in driving distance, we wanted to use our vacation club, and we only had a few days to work with.  After looking at a few options, we settled on Branson, Missouri.  We also invited my parents and my grandparents along for the ride.  Grandma and Grandpa had been twice before, but I don't think they had any clue what they were signing up for when they agreed to come with the Wx!

We planned to leave after work and school on Wednesday afternoon/early evening.  By the time I got a couple errands run, picked up all three kiddos and made it to my neighborhood, I had already had two calls from my mom wondering when we were leaving and as I pulled into my driveway, I was only slightly surprised to see that my parents and grandparents were already parked there waiting for us.

"Good thing I loaded almost everything in the truck last night," I  thought.  "I hope they will at least let me pee and put on jeans before we leave."  I didn't give them the option, though I did leave the younger two buckled while Ray and I ran into the house to use the facilities and change out of our school clothes into jeans and sweatshirts.  I was also glad to see Michael had made it home, gotten cleaned up and was ready to go.  In next to no time at all, we were on the road and headed south for Missouri.  The plan: drive until we need to stop and find somewhere to crash till morning.

As best I can recall, our first evening of driving wasn't too eventful.  We stopped and had a nice dinner at the Machine Shed in Iowa and decided to keep driving since the boys were traveling fairly well.  We saw small town after small town with motel after motel so we didn't see any reason to stop.

The drive continued pretty well and about 10 p.m., we decided we'd look for a place to stop.  Why is it that as soon as you are looking for a place, they suddenly become very sparse?  And being a Bambrick by blood, getting off the main road for a place is NOT an option.  If it's not visible from the road, forget it and drive on.  Sooner or later one is bound to exist.  Using the GPS, we saw that there was a town about 45-60 minutes out with several options so onward we continued.  I even used the GPS's info to call one and ask about availability and pricing.  It was both available AND cheap!  (Almost too cheap; it was not first choice on my list.)

By the time we arrived, boys were wide-awake, yet dead tired and a wee bit on the whiny side, and by wee bit, I really mean super de duper!!  The place I had called had lights out in their neon sign and lots of semi's in the lot.  I suggested we try the one across the road.  So we did.  They had 1 or 2 smoking rooms only and were way over priced.  Next.  We tried the motel across from that.  They had smoking rooms, so weird hospitality room but would but all 9 of us in one room but 2 adults on a hide-a-bed.  Not exactly ideal.  So on to my last resort.  The small town inn.  Since I just wanted a bed that I hoped was fairly clean without the stench of smoke, two non-smoking rooms were checked out at reasonable rates.  I was pleasantly surprised by the cleanness of our accommodations and shortly, we all dozed off to dreamland.  We're over 1/2 there now baby.