Starting the kitchen remodel

Time to start a big project - remodeling the kitchen. Randy didn't like where the refrigerator was located.

So he moved the refrigerator into the living room, took out the cabinets that surrounded it, opened the wall, and is building a double pantry. Yep, that looks like a big enough project for awhile.

Visitors in the night...and day

This morning, as usual, we took Shorty for a walk and, as usual, I was on poop-scoop duty. When we got back I went to throw the baggie away and discovered our trash can was nowhere in sight. There was nothing to indicate where it went except that one of the decorative concrete pieces that border our driveway was turned over.  With only that as a guide, Randy stood in our front yard and looked. And across the road, through several neighbors' yards, where the state park backs up to the mobile park, he saw it. 

Our trash was lying about but to our surprise, the can and the bag were pretty much undamaged. We scooped the trash back into the bag, set the bag back in the can, and Randy trucked it back home. Our place isn't even visible from here!

Whatever took the can, it wasn't bothered by the automatic senor lights in our driveway. The only marks we found were a couple of little punctures on the lid. I imagine anything big enough to drag the whole can so far would be pretty big; maybe these are the marks of an opportunistic critter who found it after the theft? 

Later as I was working in the carport area, I head tiny little sounds on our dock. When I investigated, I found a lovely bird walking along the railing. 

He's a Limpkin, related to cranes. This, then, is what has been eating the apple snails from our canal. I don't mind; apple snails are invasive anyway. I've been collecting the empty shells; he looked them over as if he was fondly remembering past meals.

After he left, a couple of blue-eyed Ibis showed up to check out the pile of water weeds Randy pulled out to dry. "Morning, Ralph". "Morning, Sam". 

Above me a faint rustle showed me where a young squirrel was hiding. He was so surprised that I saw him - he thought he was invisible!

College of the Ozarks Museum on a lazy Saturday

Today was a very casual day. Everyone picked their  favorite Lambert's Cafe leftovers for breakfast, then we just sat around watching police-dog videos on TV. It's a great was to spend a Saturday morning, and by 11 we had woken up enough to head out to see the College of the Ozarks museum. They have a lot of buildings here, each one dedicated to a different topic. We started with one that was full of cool old trucks and cars, loving restored. 

They even had several careful-organized and cataloged displays of barbed wire. Over the years there have been a lot of different designs - who knew?

But I got strangely dizzy and so very tired that the rest of the gang kindly drove me back to the condo. They went back to the museum to check out the rest of it and I took a 3 hour nap.

Later Randy cooked steaks, baked potato and salad for dinner, and we relaxed in front of the TV again until sleep claimed us.

Bass Pro World of Wonders, aka WOW!

We decided to go to the new Bass Pro World of Wonders museum today, getting breakfast along the way. That turned out to be two great ideas. We stopped at the Village Inn for breakfast and everyone agreed we'd go back there anytime! I am not tired of biscuits and gravy so I got that, while Randy had an omelette. The friendly waitress did such a great job of selling their Hawaiian Strawberry pie, made with pineapple, coconut, pecans, strawberries, and whipped cream, that I had to try it. Everyone took a taste and we all agreed it was great. 

Now, on to Bass Pro, where you start at the "Dream Buck", four times life size with a 12 foot antler spread. Now THIS is how to start with a WOW!

 Then upstairs, through the center of a buffalo herd.

The first set of rooms pays homage to Bass Pros' roots. It started as a small 8 ft square store inside Johnny Morris's dad's liquor store and 13 years later branched out into a slightly larger stand-alone store. The first display fish tank was actually an old underground gas storage tank. Johnny cleaned it up and stocked it with local crappie, then added bass, who promptly ate all the crappie. 

One plaque has a written Fishermans' prayer, related to Johnny's love of fishing and his gratitude for not dying in a boating accident in 1972. 

Another plaque refers to Bass Pros's take-over of Cabela. I thought they phrased it very gentlemanly: "Bass Pro and Cabela's came together to create the world's premier outdoor retailer". That's a classy way to say it.

More camp than class are the jackets that Johnny gave to Porter Wagoner over the years.

The next set of rooms is filled with Indian facts and artifacts, like this painted deer hide representing a late 1700 or early 1800 battle between Sioux and Mandans.  

There were bows, lots of arrow heads, and a couple of beautiful dresses. 

Next the story of the decimation of the buffalo was recounted - the population went from 60,000,000 before 1800 to around 300 in 1900. Horrible. 

And two rooms were full of paintings about Lewis and Clark's journey. Current artist Charles Fritz followed their path to create the 72 paintings, and they look very good. 

Then we headed into the wildlife museum. And once again - wow! Taxidermied specimens are the basis for this section, and they are really well done. Not just well done, but beautifully displayed. 

Of course I'd rather these were live animals, even if it means I don't get to see them.  But I have to admire the skill here. 

In the next room is the "National Collection of Heads and Horns". It's unnerving to see so many game animals trophies but according to the plaque, the object of this collection wasn't trophies. In 1906 a zoological society, concerned that the current trend would cause game animals to become extinct, wanted a depository to preserve existing samples for future generations. The collection changed hands a few times before arriving here as "a constant reminder that conservation matters to everyone".

Conservation has changed from doing nothing, to preserving all members of a species' population, and now to managing the population with census, habitat management, relocation, and culling. Apparently a lot of deer can be culled because there is a large room filled with these. This is the only place I've seen a piebald deer. 

From here we moved to the more exotic wildlife displays, starting with Narwhals. Simply amazing displays here.

After the rest of the African animal section, we moved to a photography display. This is how I really love to see wildlife!

It took several hours to see everything, and this was just half of it! So we took a little break, snacking on popcorn and soda, before going into the water section. It, too, has an amazing centerpiece to welcome visitors. I like this one even better, because all these fish are alive. They make a beautiful, swirling tornado of life.

There were some mounted displays here but not as many. A lot of the space was given over to the history of sport fishing. On the wall of plaques honoring people who influenced the sport, I looked for the oldest name and to my surprise it was Dame Juliana Berners, a Benedictine nun who in the early 1400s wrote treatises on hunting and fishing.

There was an interesting section about Bass Pro's amiable relationship with several Presidents, lots of memorabilia from famous fishermen/women, and so much more. 

Next we moved on to the live animal area - yea!!  The tanks in the main room were filled with perfectly clear water, which made it easy to see the wide variety of sea life. These carefully designed settings give their inhabitants lots of room, access to hiding places, and plenty of company. 

We watched a short film about a young woman who caught-and-released a fantastic sailfish, before going into the next section. Here we found several displays with different water-life, including a large one with a couple of sharks. One shark was white - not a Great White, simply white. Thanks to Krissie's camera phone, which is much better than mine, I have something to help me remember how beautiful is it.

After enjoying all this, we went back to the main room where the stingray petting tank was.  It was a very large circular tank; the stingrays could easily avoid us, as some of the larger ones did. But most came within touching distance. And a couple, if they felt they were being ignored, would slide up the side of the tank, partially out of the water, right in front of us. You can't ignore that!

I was glad to see several staff members there; they were giving information but I'm sure their main job was to make sure nobody did stupid stuff. I expected the rays would feel either slick or rough, but they feel like they are covered with velvet ... wet velvet. Simply wonderful. I couldn't get a good photo but I didn't care - I just want something to remember it!

This place was one of the most wonderful museums we've ever been to! The quality and quantity made it well worth the admission price - I wouldn't have missed this! 

We were happy and tired and ready to eat. Fortunately we were close to Lambert's Cafe (Home of the Throwed Rolls). Most of us chose something we'd had before, but Randy opted for Hog Jowls. Which basically means he had a plate full of thick bacon, with fixins'!

Shopping around Branson

It's always nice to sleep in late on vacation, even if you're retired. We slept late today, but not too late to go to The Farmhouse for breakfast. That was a great choice - Randy ordered pancakes and I had biscuits and gravy - and both were very good. 

Now, what to do? Well, just down a few doors was Dick's 5 and 10. Wow, what an fun store!

This store, which was full of people all the time, is chock full of cute stuff from several past decades. Candy, of course:

And they have ton of other old-fashioned things across all genres, including Little Golden Books, paper dolls, granny panties, embroidery patterns, Slinky Dogs, and Stretch Armstrong. They even have the old foldable baskets that I vaguely, vaguely remember from a long time ago. 

Overhead are plaques about Dick Harley's life and WWII memorabilia. And an electric train runs around the store on an elevated track. 

SO much fun! We bought some candy - not that we needed it after that big breakfast, but we have to support this family-run store in some way!

Just a couple of doors down is the beautiful Victorian House, where all my dreams live....

I would love to live in a place that looks like this, all pink and white and lacy and flowery.

But I didn't find anything that would fit into our luggage for the flight back, so I had to leave it all here. We walked across the street to Dino's Cake Store, famous for their Carrot Cake. Probably $5.50 is not too much for their cake, but since I was still full of biscuits and gravy and since Randy makes the best carrot cake ever, I decided to pass. Anyway, the real reason for crossing the street was to get to a thrift store. And it was a lovely thrift store, full of old stuff. But again, nothing there seemed worth the challenge of packing it to get home.  A short walk to a second thrift store yielded the same results, so we left empty handed but entertained.

Randy R wanted to take us for a ride on their boat. It's a pretty boat and would have been lovely to cruise on, but there was some trouble with the fuel line. Since this area was badly flooded from the weekend storm, the water was running high and fast, and it didn't seem like a good idea to go too far in a boat that wasn't operating at 100%.

No problem, there are other things to do. Like wineries! We went to the Mount Pleasant winery where, as usual, Randy had to do double duty, drinking my samples. 

Afterwards we stopped at H & H to get a few groceries and went back to the condo, where Randy, assisted by Randy R, made dinner of pork chops, potatoes, corn and brownies. Aaron had arrived by then and contributed some of Glenda's Texas cake. Glenda wasn't able to join us (boo) but her cake was appreciated. 

We finished the day in a food coma, watching True Grit and texting. What a great day!

Branson, here we come

Randy R and Kris kindly asked us to visit them at their condo in Branson for a week. Sounds like a good idea!  We can usually get a good deal on Alligiant, but it comes with a different kind of price. They fly out of Orlando early...real early. We had to get up at 2 am to arrive 2 hours before our flight. That is way too early, but a week with Randy and Kris is worth it. 

When we got there, we settled our stuff into their guest bedroom and headed out for lunch. Billy Bob's was the place to go today. They serve a mean chili cheese dog, fries, and chocolate shake, and Randy's cheeseburger was just as good. 

We were understandably a bit tired so we weren't up for a lot today. Randy R drove us to the Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery, which was just perfect. Inside the Visitor's Center, a docent told us a little about the place. When the powers that be built the Table Rock Dam, it created areas of deep cold water, which is perfect for trout. Here they raise Rainbow and Brown trout - 1.3 million a year, with about 700,000 of them ending up in Lake Taneycomo. That's a lot of trout! And they do it by hand-collecting sperm and eggs, which is just plain weird. Poor little fishies don't get to have any fun at all. 

These, on display in the Visitor's Center, are really pretty. And big. Really big. 

Outside we walked along the trout hatchery rows. When they start, the fish are fed every 20 minutes. As they get larger they are moved to other areas and fed a couple of times a day. That's a lot of fish to feed; we did our bit with 25 cents' worth of fish pellets. 

Next we went back to the condo for a nap. But I never nap, I just fall asleep. So two hours later Randy woke me up to make sure I was still alive. We all sat around and visited for awhile before heading out for dinner. We weren't in a hurry though; we made a quick stop at Walmart, then stopped at an amazing scenic point. The Ozarks are so lovely. 

When we could tear ourselves away from the view, we went to Mr. Gilberti's Place for dinner. We were going to start with a couple of salads before the waitress assured us that one salad would be enough for all four of us. And she was right! It was a great salad, too - I even had seconds. Our pizza was delicious, too, made all the more enjoyable by the relaxed Italian atmosphere. Lovely.

End of the day - time to get some more sleep!