May 9, 2024
We have a full day today. We are first going to explore the Butterfly Palace. It is a very neat place. It is a two story building with a theater on the second floor. It shows a video about the Monarch butterflies and their 3 generational migrational journey from south to north and back south again. It was very educational and very interesting. It was also in 3-D. Cool to see the butterflies flying right at you. After we watched the video, we entered through two sets of doors to get into the very humid and warm butterfly area. When you first enter you can pick up a “test tube” with a flower attached to it and carry it around to attract butterflies to you. We were in this area for about 30 minutes. We then went back downstairs. There were a couple of other options but they were geared more for children and we did not explore them. After browsing the gift shop we headed out to our next stop, The Kings Castle Theater.
The 2:00PM show of the Dublin Tenors and Celtic Ladies was our afternoon entertainment. The show was very good and entertaining. It was definitely not the Celtic Woman but it was very close. For Christmas of 2019 I got tickets to see Celtic Woman at the then brand new Tanger Center in Greensboro. But then in March 2020 COVID shut everything down and they were not able to reschedule the show so we got a refund. I still have that show on my Bucket List. As well as attending an Andre Rieu concert.
It was time to get something to eat and we have a few hours before the next event. We opted to try the Hero’s Tastes & Taps. The restaurant was very well decorated with fire, police, and military memorabilia. I ordered a flight to try some of the different brews, as usual. Our waiter was very honest and straight forward about what he thought was good on the menu. The food was underwhelming. Nancy tried a dish that the waiter said was one of the best. He talked her out of ordering a Rueben. She was only able to eat a little bit of it. The waiter came by to check and she said that she should have ordered the Rueben. The waiter removed her plate after an apology and we could hear him in the kitchen. “Rueben on the fly”. That means he needed one right now. He brought it and Nancy ate it but it was nothing to write home about. My food was okay but not spectacular. The beer was good and we also dined on an appetizer of fried green tomatoes which were very good. We still had some time before the 7:00PM show. We had decided we needed to check out the Tanger Outlet Mall which was about 0.2 mile away. We found that we were both in need of a pair of socks. I usually buy Hanes socks and there is usually a Hanes in the Tanger Outlets.
We made the trip there and found the sign for Hanes. We went to enter the store and something was terribly amiss. The clothing inside was Champion. The employees were in the process of setting up the store and were not set up for retail sales yet. They told us that Hanes had just left last month. I needed a restroom and there just happen to be one a few yards down. As we were walking we passed a SAS store. Of course, Nancy went in to look at the expensive but very comfortable shoes. After I finished my business I met here in the store and they sell socks. Actually they had a sale going on. Buy 3 pair get the 4th free. Nancy wanted me to try the diabetic socks so that I would have a little compression to help my feet while standing in the kitchen for several hours a day. So I bought 2 pairs of those and a pair of the anklet type and she got her pair of anklet socks as well. We still had lots of time left so we went back to the motel to relax and maybe nap a little.
The other shows we had been to were not sold out and we had our choice of seats with lots of leg room. Tonight was very different. This show was sold out and the parking lot had several buses. Fortunately there is a special area just for buses. I dropped Nancy off at the door and was hoping for a good place to park. As luck would have it, the parking lot also has an area for larger vehicles as well as busses. It was a great parking place and was going to be very easy to exit. The show is the Haygoods at the Clay Cooper Theater. It was an awesome show. They had a large variety of music, stories, special effects such as lasers, zip lines, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed it. And we actually had some really good seats and the leg room was quite adequate. I would highly recommend this show to anyone who ventures to Branson. If the price were right, I’d go see the show again. We just mulled around a little after the show as there was no sense in trying to hurry to get out. We had no problem getting back to the motel which was only about 5 minutes away. Another great day in Branson.
