Teen Travel Writing Scholarship.

Branson

            My family and I try to take at least one vacation every year to some place new.  Labor Day of 2009, we decided to take a trip to Branson, Missouri.  It is about a five and a half hour drive from Derby, Kansas where I live.

            We packed up on Thursday evening and were off Friday morning. “Hooray, no school!”  After driving for about four hours we stopped in a little town to grab some lunch.  The café was called 2J’s and they had the best hamburgers and onion rings I’ve ever tasted!  I was surprised because of how little the town was and it was nothing fancy.

            When we drove into Branson, I was amazed.  There were tons of attractions every where I looked, bumper boat places, go-kart tracks, water-slides, bungee-jumping, roller coasters, pretty much anything fun you could think of.  It made me think of Las Vegas with all the attractions, even though I’ve never been to Vegas.  My mom got us front row seats at Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede.  It was the coolest thing; it’s like a play with horses, people, cows, and pigs which is what we ate like!  The menu consisted of Cornish hen, corn-on-the-cob, barbeque pork loin, and an apple turnover. It was delicious!   

            The second day we went to Silver Dollar City and it was so much fun!  The first thing we did was tour the Marvel Cave.  The cave was interesting, but was a very long walk! We went under ground approximately 54 stories, where it was cold, dark, and moist with bats flying above our heads. “Yikes!”  Then, off to the roller coasters!  Out of the four roller coasters my brother, sisters, and I rode, the best was called Wildfire.  It made almost a 90- degree drop going super fast and went upside down twice!  We were scared and excited at first, but we all stuck it out and ended up going on it a total of three times!  That evening we went to an extremely awesome two hour Irish dance called “Spirit of the Dance.”  I wasn’t expecting it to be that fun to watch, but I was completely wrong.  The performance from the dancers was phenomenal! I would go watch it ten more times and still be thrilled by it, the way they moved there feet and hands was amazing!  It takes skills and great choreography to perform like they did.

            The third day wasn’t as thrilling as the first and second.  We went shopping at a strip mall called The Landing.  There were tons of stores on both sides of us as we walked down the street.  After the day of shopping we went to a Chinese acrobat show.  It wasn’t real exciting; it actually got real old after the first 15 minutes because the performers did the same thing over and over again.

            During this trip I got to experience a new city with my family that was very fun and exciting.  I wouldn’t go back for a few years because I experienced everything I wanted to when we went.