Branson, MO

Turkey Creek

Our house

Escapees park

Let the fun begin!

The killer loop

Just a little wet (soaked)

Elvis loves me

Here we are at Turkey Creek RV Park in Branson Mo. We have been here almost two weeks. The first week was rather busy. We saw three shows. Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay (a new show, only nine weeks old) is where Elvis presented me with my prize. He was singing Teddy Bear to all the lovebirds in the audience (of 22 people). Duane and I were holding hands. (The white blobs in the pic used to look like teddy bears and the big red one was a heart, but we forgot to take the pic right away.) We also saw the Rankin Brothers and the Sons of the Pioneers. We recommend all three shows. The rock and roll was really high energy. The Rankins were very intertaining. The Sons are cowboy singers. I'm a fan so I really enjoyed them. We spent one day at Silver Dollar City. We rode three water rides and all three (dry) roller coasters. The fourth loop of the second coaster did me in (motion sickness, but I didn't hurl). Duane says I can't run with the big dogs. I did manage to recoup enough for the third coaster, though I was a bit unsteady after the last two. (Just an hour of laying flat after we got home put me right.) We also toured around town, found the church, wood carvers, quilt shop. This week we laid low. Monday we went fishing on Turker Creek and Lake Taneycomo until the thunder storms chased us home. It rained for 24 hours and is showering today. So we just get up and walk 40 minutes then do our things the rest of the day. This Escapees park is rather quiet as most of the people are visitors and gone most of the time. We have been to Tues. dinner, Friday entertainment and Saturday breakfast. We leave Monday for the far north--Normal Bloomington Ill to visit my brother.

Enough for now,

Louise and Duane

2 Cuties and a Field Full of Diamonds

Emma Jean

Ava Marie

Splash pool

See any sparklers?

Gateway To Riches

Welcome to Crater of Diamonds State Park. This is the place where anybody can pay their $7 to play in the dirt. We took our chance on Saturday. We armed ourselves with tools and sweated our way through several buckets of gravel to find our sparklers. No luck. This place is a jasper lover's Paradise, though. I found more than I could ever hope to take with me. The weather did not co-operate. Daytime temps were in the 100's with a heat index of 110. There were lots of people out there, though, thumbing their noses at melanoma and heat stroke. There were lots of people ponying up $5.50 apiece to play in the splash pool--3 1/2 ft. at the deepest. We spent 3 hours in the morning in the field and 2 hours after supper. That was enough. This is a nice state park in spite of the heat and humidity. The campground is shady and has a nice walk down to the Little Missouri River. The park offers lots of help on how to find diamonds and has equipment for rent. Because of the tall trees, the campground blocked our tv reception and interfered with our cell phone service and internet. So we spent a rather quiet weekend reading novels. I also worked on my sewing. It was too hot for Duane to carve. But we survived.

The above pix of the little girls were taken on Thursday before we left Texas for Arkansas. They have both grown in the last three weeks. The other pix are from the park.

Basta por hoy,

Louise and Duane