R and J in the USA

The upside of visiting Branson, Missouri in January is that you can drive anywhere you want any time you want. That’s what the woman at the Table Rock State Park office told us on the way into town when we asked her for recommendations of shows to see. Apparently, usually Branson is one big traffic jam surrounded by opportunities for family fun, entertainment and merriment. Not in January. You also have the pick of the litter when it comes to campsites too. 

The downside is that Branson, Missouri, a mecca for good times and live entertainment in the Midwest has a short off season. And January is pretty much it. Apparently November and December is an all out Ozark Christmas Extravaganza and June to August is when the good times in Branson are in peak swing. So, if we want to feel the heart pumping, foot thumping rhythm of good times being had by all in this Ozark hot spot, we are going to have to come back, well, virtually any other time of year than this one. 

You may be quick to say this experience is a failure in itinerary planning and, well, you would be correct. At least, that is what it looks like on the surface. And, functionally speaking, it is entirely accurate – meaning, we did not do this on purpose. If we had known that Branson was basically closed in January, we probably would have opted to come at another time. In our meager defense, we visit so many places and we approach each plan from different points on the “fly-by-the-seat-of-our pants to intricately-detailed-spreadsheet-planning“ spectrum. Some we think ahead to check the hours or the seasons or the rules for tickets and reservations, and some we don’t. Branson definitely fell into the latter category. We just didn’t think to look into it. That said with 10 months, 4 seasons, 50 states, 51 5ks and various other on seasons and off seasons to contend with, we still were feeling overall pretty good about how we patchworked our little puzzle together as we rolled into the empty-ish hotspot. We knew there were bound to be things we overlooked and we knew, unless we decided to spend the entire month of January in Hawaii or Florida, or somewhere too cold for our preferences for a winter on the road where the winter wonderland would be more fully in effect, wherever we ended up in January was probably not going to be the best time of year to be in that place. So, we came into January accepting that we would likely discover that in various ways as we drove through the southern parts of the Midwest and the West South Central of the US. We understood we might not get the best of what they each have to offer. With only 10 months to work in, we had to pick our priorities to plan around, and though Branson was on our list of must see spots, it didn’t make the cut of stops to plan the trip around. 

Functionally, what this meant was, in a town where extravaganzas are the norm and there are countless shows and live entertainment to choose from every night, when we showed up, there was one. 

So, after careful consideration, we opted to go with that one. 

And it all couldn’t have been more perfect!

One thing we’ve found on the road is, there is no place we end up that isn’t worth a visit. As stated in other posts, that’s because we are not on this trip to have a vacation – we are on this trip to see the country, in all of its different seasons and states. Even when we miss a turn or need to change our route, every place we’ve ended up on this trip is someplace interesting and fun to be. There are some spots we miss going that we are bummed to miss, but there has not once been a single place we have ended up that we weren’t glad to have seen, for one reason or another. While we wouldn’t recommend January in Branson for an epic family getaway, it was really neat, and actually kind of perfect on a tour to see the country in its full form.

And, as an offshoot to that convenient feature of the trip, we have also found, after arranging it based on what mattered most to us, all the other things that pop up that can seem like itinerary mistakes at first or missed opportunities all seem to have blessings in disguise that eventually reveal themselves. Sometimes big ones.

Branson was all that and more. 

We’ve been to enough towns where the kind of fun and entertainment that is flashing lights and high octane stimulation is the thing, whether the Dells in Wisconsin, the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada or the boardwalks of Atlantic City, NJ to know what all of these closed and shuttered activities that we drove by in Branson would be like in their peak season. We were in the mood for a little quiet time. We couldn’t have been happier getting to cruise through this city and get to imagine it in full bloom without having to actually navigate the traffic or the crowds. It was peeerrrfect. 

Furthermore, we came into Missouri ready for a rest but still eager to taste the fun of Branson, and it was almost like we got to custom make our just-right-Branson-experience to suit our mood. It is definitely a place that seems worth a return visit when the sun is out and the streets are hopping, but, for where we are on our trip, we felt pretty fortunate to be able to easily cruise through and around all the neighborhoods and sights in 30 minutes. And the fact that we didn’t have to go through the exercise of considering 300 different shows and trying to decide which one to pick was a little slice of heaven and a welcome respite for our highly exercised decision muscles. Choice is great, but decision fatigue is real and there is a special loveliness when the choice is clear, because there is only one. 

Add on top of that, we had now been in a van for about a week that had gone from neat and organized to utter disaster area within days (this can happen quickly) and tidying up wasn’t going to solve the problem. This called for a full afternoon of reorganization – a task that Julie lives for – but requires time nonetheless. 

Our day in Branson was a special kind of perfect that we wouldn’t have envisioned if you’d have asked us when we wanted to be in town. After taking a tour around the empty streets to take in the sights, we stopped for some groceries at a fantastic organic foods store and Julie spent 3 hours in the van in organizing bliss and we ended the evening with our hand selected entertainment for the night – the Grand Country Jubilee.

And if our Branson delight wasn’t enough already – the show was not only easy to pick – it was fantastic! It was the perfect amount of Branson cheesiness mixed with genuine talent and good old-fashioned entertainment to paste our faces with smiles from start to finish. We had originally been planning to leave after the first act to get to bed before 10PM, knowing we had a race to run in the morning and an hour to drive in the morning to get there, but we had such a good time in Act I, we decided to stay for the whole thing. We tried to put our finger on what made it so wonderful and we landed on a few things. 

One – there was some serious talent on that stage. The singers were on the great side of good with a few shining particularly bright, like the bass singer that had been performing for 40 years and hit notes so low you could practically feel your feet dig a foot underground just to meet them. They reverberated in your soul. The MC fired out cheesy but fun jokes with an ease and light-heartedness that felt playful rather than smarmy and his costume changes were so bountiful and fantastic, he could have easily made Taylor Swift envious. And the show’s jester that came out to do ridiculous vignette’s inbetween songs, well, he was operating at a whole other level. We both felt like, if circumstances had unfolded differently, he could easily have been considered among the greatest entertainers of all time, that is, if the world had gotten more of a hold of him. He made his home right here in this little theater of Branson, but his talent could easily have conquered the world stage. Not only did he make us laugh throughout, but, at the end, just, as an afterthought, he was paraded around the stage like a circus act to show off that he could not only play every instrument on the stage, but tear each one apart. Our jaws were dropped as he hopped from fiddle, to piano, to drums to banjo, banging out music on each one that would make any musician stand at attention. 

But, what made the show such a good time was more than all that good stuff and even more than the sum of those parts – it was something else entirely. And it was something we didn’t expect from a spot with flashing lights and a bright marquis that screamed, “let us entertain you”. The whole time, we felt like we were hanging out in the living room where a bunch of our talented friends had taken the stage and we all together were just having fun having fun. The show didn’t feel phoned in nor separate from the audience watching it. It wasn’t happening in front of us, it was happening all together somehow. It felt sincere. Who knows what they all felt like backstage – maybe they fooled the heck out of us and couldn’t wait to get out of there – but it seemed like a cozy crowd of folks just having a good time and being silly for a little bit, taking a break from all the seriousness and madness of the world. All of the performers seemed so at home in their skins and on stage and the crowd, mostly consisting of folks a decade or two our senior (to give you a sense of the demographics, the merch table’s featured item were DVDs for sale) it all just seemed like the neighborhood coming to watch the local hyper (and super talented) theater kids put on a show – and we mean that in the best of possible ways.

When all was said and done, it was anything but off-season for us in Branson, Missouri.