Serena’s parents generously allowed us the use of a timeshare for a week. Sometimes it can be difficult to find a place to use it when you can’t plan ahead, so we try to find seasonal locations during their off-season. That’s how we ended up going to Branson, Missouri and had a somewhat awful trip.
I had never heard of the place, but it didn’t take long for me to get the general idea of its appeal to some people. I would not count myself among them. The reason I was interested in heading into the region was due to the numerous caves, waterfalls, and hiking opportunities that abound in the area. We left at midnight so that Odessa could sleep during the ten hour drive. I prefer driving at night, so this was good for me too. The drive was nice and easy.
At about 8 A.M., near Springfield, MO, we stopped at a location I had learned was the spot of a non-commercialized cave. I thought it might be neat to check out and explore a little, and it was one of many I had set up for the trip. I had even packed a couple flashlights and head lamps because I am a nerd. I’d guess this is where the trip started to go downhill.
After driving on some gravel roads in the middle of nowhere for a while, we came to a large stream blocking the road. It was at least 30 feet wide and the water was swift. Ostensibly, the cave was on the hill I could see on just the other side of the stream. I wasn’t going to try anything crazy today, though a couple years ago I may have. So we decided to turn around. Only, the car wouldn’t start up. That’s not good. No cell phone reception, either.
I lifted the hood to see if I could spot a problem, because, as everyone who knows me will attest, I’m basically the world’s best auto mechanic. I can fuel the car by myself, wash the windows by myself, and, on good days, I can even adjust the mirrors by myself. So when I opened the hood and saw that one little thing looked like it should be connected to some other little thing, I thought to myself “Hey, I should probably connect those little things and make one big thing.” So I got some string I had handy and tied everything all up nice and tight. Next try, the car started. I was feeling pretty awesome.
We decided to have the car looked at when we got to Springfield. They told me that what I had done was basically unrelated to whatever the real problem was and the fact that the car started up after my repair was completely coincidental. That’s so stupid. Anyway, they didn’t seem to know what the real problem was, but charged us eighty bucks to fix something with the battery regardless.
That behind us, we arrived in Branson about an hour later. We walked around Branson Landing, a commercial area along a lake. I don’t really care for such things, but they had a fountain there that was pretty neat. They had little shows with water jets, colored lights, and giant fireballs that was synchronized to music and pretty entertaining. The temperature that day was 73 degrees F, and it was hard to believe it was January. The rest of the trip would be much colder, but still warmer than Wisconsin.
Anyway, upon arriving in Branson, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that I wasn’t a fan of the city. It’s just not my kind of place at all. Most of the stuff we planned for the trip was well outside Branson, so it wasn’t a deal-breaker or anything.
The first real problem of the trip soon became apparent: Serena and I can be pretty stupid parents. Maybe it’s because we’re still sort of new at this or because we’re just far too inconsiderate, but we clearly did not think about what Odessa would get out of the trip. Remember when I said that most of the stuff we planned was outside of Branson? Well the logical implication is that a lot of driving would be required to get to the places we wanted to see; an implication that initially went unnoticed to us as we planned the trip.
As a result, Odessa was stuck in a car seat for long rides. She’s just over two years old, and if you know her at all, you’ll understand that she is extremely active and hates being restrained. On just the second day of the trip, at 8:50 A.M., as we strapped her in the seat, she looked at us with pouty eyes and sweetly pined for better days by whining “Home?” It would be a word she’d say over and over again throughout the trip.
The next problem that we had was something was wrong with the coordinates I put into our GPS for things like caves and other points of interest we wanted to see. For some reason many of them did not seem to be in the right place. We’ve been geocaching for almost six years, logged over 250 finds, and owned three different GPS models so I consider myself to be pretty capable when it comes to this stuff. As I sit here in Madison, I still don’t know exactly what went wrong, but I’m going to figure it out eventually so it doesn’t happen again. The point is, not only were we subjecting Odessa to long car rides, when we got to our “destination” there would often be nothing there.
And then the problem that emerged after that was when Odessa got sick. And when Odessa gets sick, I get sick. We both had some pretty bad nausea, though I managed to control mine. And by “control mine”, I am eloquently saying that I didn’t vomit all over everything, like Odessa did. Multiple times a day, every day. We ran out of clothes and bedding for her.
Two days before we were due to check out, Serena and I had a talk. Odessa and I were really sick, and it seemed a foregone conclusion that Serena would be getting sick as well. This posed another problem: How in the heck are we going to be able to drive another ten hours home if we’re all sick? We decided to leave early so that Serena could drive back before she got sick. We thought if we were feeling up to it, we might also check out the zoo in St. Louis, which looked really neat and was free.
As it turned out, I was feeling a bit better the day we left so we did end up at the zoo, which was nice. Right after the zoo, however, is when Serena got sick. I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t want me to get into too much detail because she’s such a lady, but let’s just say it was explosive, forceful, and… let’s go with voluminous. Not to mention frequent. So I ended up being the driver. Oh, and to top it off, the last three hours of driving were through a freezing, gusting, and very slippery snow storm.
And while we’re very glad this is all over, we don’t mean to imply that there weren’t good things about the trip. The highlight for me was Blanchard Springs Cavern. For as much as I am interested in caves, I am embarrassed to say that I did not actually realize that caves could have rooms this enormous. Every cave that I have been to is relatively narrow with some larger rooms, but nothing even compared to this. Every cave that I have been to before is on some other inferior tier below Blanchard. I cannot say enough about it. I even had dreams about it that night. I am even more eager now than before to experience other, larger caves.
We also found some history at the historic site of the Battle of Pea Ridge, a Civil War encounter which solidified Missouri for the Union. Wikipedia, the unquestionably infallible source on everything, refers to it as one of the best preserved Civil War battlefields, and it was fascinating to explore. This area is also where Odessa discovered her love of deer. “More deer? More deer?” We toured Cosmic Caverns, another show cave in the area as well, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. Additionally, we passed through a small town in Arkansas called Eureka Springs which was very neat.
The Ozarks region seems very interesting, but circumstances prevented us from seeing pretty much any of it. We didn’t do a single hike, and the only time I used my headlamp was when I needed to clean up vomit in Odessa’s very dimly lit bedroom. Serena and I want to return to the area, but this time we will come without Odessa, and we’ll stay in Eureka Springs instead of Branson.