Last week we went on a wonderful family vacation to Branson, Missouri. I grew up going there with my family and grandparents and I was SO excited to take Jake! Stephen's parents have a time share there, so we were all staying in their condo and my Mom flew down from Chicago to join us for the week. Jake was so spoiled having 2 grandmothers on vacation with him! We had lots of fun things planned for the week!
We left Dallas on Tuesday, mid morning...we had to wait for Stephen to get out of summer football conditioning. We ate lunch in the car and I was certain Jake would pass out and sleep for most of the trip, WRONG! He did not sleep for one single second of the 6 1/2 hour car ride, but thankfully he is a good traveler...and thankfully, we have a dvd player in the car :) He was happy the whole trip. Here is a pic as we were driving into Branson and a video of the cheer Jake started chanting once he realized we were there.
We arrived in Branson at dinner time. We picked my Mom up at the airport and ate dinner in the condo, settling in and unpacking. The view from our balcony was gorgeous!
The next morning we were up early to take a ride on the Branson Scenic Railway. Jake loves trains, so I knew this was something we had to do! We got to ride the train up into the Ozark Mountains and across the Missouri/Arkansas border. It was a really nice train ride with gorgeous scenery. I thought Jake might get a little restless since it was about an 1 1/2 hour train ride, but he was mesmerized by everything!
The train had about 8 cars on it, we rode in one of the dome cars...you can see it in this picture, it has the 'hump' sticking up. The ceiling of the car was glass, so we all had a great view on the trip.
We got to pass through 4 tunnels on the trip (2 going, 2 on the way back.) The first was 3/4 of a mile long, so Jake was a little unsure about it, but then thought it was super cool! Here we are entering one of the tunnels.
Checking out the view with Daddy
The mountains were so pretty.
Taking a turn to sit with Grandma and Grandpa
I was trying to get a good picture of the engine leading our train, but this is the best I got.
Checking things out with Grammy
Another tunnel
More pictures of the view...Jake had my phone so he took a million shots! Here are just a few of them :)
Some more shots of the train chugging down the tracks.
Another tunnel shot
Happy, Happy, Happy!
Stephen took these pics of Jake watching out the windows, I love how intensely Jake is looking at everything!
Even though I have been to Branson many times, the train ride was not something my family had ever done, so it was nice to do something new to start the trip. After the train, we went back to the condo for lunch and got Jake down for an early nap. We were headed to Silver Dollar City in the afternoon and he definitely needed to rest up! I'm going to blog both days worth of Silver Dollar City pics in the next post...I apologize in advance for the many, many pictures that will be in these posts. I'm hoping to eventually turn this all into a book and want to be sure I don't leave anything out :)
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