We kicked off our summer break by heading out on a trip to Branson, Missouri. I had been several times growing up, but this was the the first time for the rest of our family. We went on our Florida trip one week before school was out, and this trip was one week AFTER school was out.
It’s great to have the flexibility with homeschooling to schedule our vacations while most of the country is still in school and the crowds are low.
Since we planned to be there only 4 nights, we decided to get a hotel room instead of renting a house. We just needed a place to crash at night, and it was significantly less expensive. (And yes, we all sleep in 1 room!) That did mean, however, that we would be going out for dinner every night. With big days at the theme park, it wouldn’t have been ideal to cook once getting back anyway.
We tried out Guy Fieri’s Branson Kitchen & Bar on our first night. We ordered 2 appetizers and a burger and it fed our whole family!
At Branson Landing, there’s a cool fountain show.
It turned out to be quite chilly the first day that we explored.
And rainy!
Naturally, there was a Bass Pro Shops nearby that we visited a couple times. 🙂
We went to Pasghetti’s on our second night. The atmosphere was so fun and the food was delicious!
We went to one show in Branson – The Haygoods. I had been over ten years ago, and I thought everyone would like it. It turned out to be a HUGE success with the whole family! We’d definitely recommend it!
Before our trip, I stockpiled all kinds of snacks and goodies in order to have plenty available!
It was still raining the morning of our first day at Silver Dollar City. We made use of the time by taking the tour of Marvel Cave. That cave was the original attraction of Silver Dollar City, and was super cool!
Once the sun came out, Trent took Shekinah & Truman off to do some roller coasters. The one they picked to ride first ended up being the most intense one there, and Shekinah & Truman were terrified! But they tried another one after that, and found out that they liked other ones!
I packed our lunch and snacks in this backpack cooler. SDC is really family-friendly and good about you bringing food in. We packed the bulk of our food & drinks, but we also got to share some fun treats at the park!
We originally tried getting lockers to store our stuff in, but it ended up being more of a hassle than it was worth. Carrying the backpack the whole day was totally fine and worked much better. There are water bottle filling stations throughout the park; so we only had to carry a couple bottles. That greatly helped with the backpack weight.
Silver Dollar City has so many kid-friendly rides!
We rode this kids roller coaster SO many times!
We had another full rainy day, so we were so thankful to have the hotel pool that the children fully enjoyed! We tried Schlotzsky’s Deli for lunch and explored a big antique mall.
Trent found the most awesome home decor/antique store ever. Three stories of all kinds of things that I love! The prices were very reasonable too; I’d highly recommend it!
It was only fitting for us to go to the White River Fish House (owned by Bass Pro) that evening!
We ended up having to extend our trip by one day to get in our 2nd day at Silver Dollar City.
These water guns were a favorite!
The weather that final day was perfect! We stayed for 9-10 hours each day we were at SDC, and put in around 10k steps, up & down the Ozark hills. But everyone did fine, and we were stroller-free!
All in all, we had a great family trip. Silver Dollar City is SO family-friendly, the shows are all clean, the crowd is generally more conservative, and there’s just SO much to do.
We are actually heading back there next month with my brother and is family. We bought season passes over New Year’s when they run their best deal; so we will look forward to more fun & hopefully better weather!
simple thriving life 