Sunday, Oct. 16

Sis arrived around 9 a.m. to stay with Mother during the time we were away in Branson. We left the house shortly thereafter. Daughter went with us.

It was a sunny, warm, beautiful autumn day. Even though it's mid-October, autumn colors are still sparse, though there was more color as we traveled north.

It was an uneventful trip...lots of fields, pastures, deteriorating houses and barns, horses, cattle, and goats grazing. In one pasture, Belted Galloway cattle grazed...a breed originating in Galloway, in the southwest of Scotland. The cattle are black, with a wide white band around the middle. The first time we saw this breed of unusual looking cattle was in Texas. We were surprised to see them in our state.

We stopped at a visitor's center about an hour from Branson to have lunch, and arrived at the campground around 2 p.m.

Hubbie has had trouble backing our camper into spaces before, but never as much as today. He just could not get the camper to maneuver correctly, and obviously, my guidance didn't help.

After several aborted attempts, he finally drove away. I was a little taken aback by that, until I looked around and saw that two vehicles...one pulling a camper...were waiting for him to get our camper situated. I knew then that a big part of Hubbie's problem in getting the camper backed into the space was his anxiety over people being held up by his attempts, and by others witnessing his ineptness.

The man in the first vehicle laughed and called out, "Stop harassing that poor man!"

"Well," I said, "he doesn't trust me, so I have trouble guiding him."

"We have the same problem," his wife commented.

The man in the second vehicle laughed and said, "He might never come back."

When he didn't return in a few minutes, Daughter began to wonder if indeed he had left the campground. I assured her that he was only making another circle around the campground to get into position for backing into the space, which this time he succeeded in doing without threat to a post and a picnic table.

Once the camper was set up, we hopped in the truck to tour Branson...to an overlook, to the dam and fish hatchery, and down the strip. This was Daughter's first trip to Branson in many years, so she was fascinated by the Titanic ship museum, the huge gorilla on the Empire State Building replica, and the Believe it or Not museum that looks like a cracked and splitting building.

At the fish hatchery, I was amused by a sign warning folks to stay away from a tub planted with prickly pear cactus and poison ivy.

This afternoon, we also visited two wineries. At one of them, we agreed to a tour of the cellar. Here, an older man showed us how he bottles sparkling spumante. During the course of the talk, there was a man standing in a nearby hallway loudly talking business on his cell phone. He was so disturbingly loud that I finally walked up to him and motioned for him to lower the level of his voice. He apologized and walked way down to the end of the hall to finish his conversation.

Our speaker joked that since today was Sunday, there was a Missouri policy against serving wine. "So," he joked, "since we can't serve you at the wine tasting, your host will taste the selections for you."

Policy or not, we were all served several samples of our choice of dry or sweet wines. Afterward, we bought bottles of the spumante, as well as sparkling raspberry juice.

Back at camp, we had a supper of ham, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and coleslaw, after which we went to Branson Landing. It was a lovely evening for a stroll down the landing, but unfortunately, there were very few stores open, and there were no water and fire shows tonight.

So we returned to camp and got ready for bed. It was a long day, and we were pretty tired and ready to sleep.