Heartland Rally, Friday June 13th, 2008

I woke up about 7 Friday morning and went into the living room to watch some TV in the recliner. Boy I slept well last night. I always sleep well in the trailer but I was so tired last night I could have slept standing in a corner.

We went down to the rally hall and had breakfast, which is an every morngin deal in this park. There is a deluxe breakfast with eggs and choice of bacon or sausage and biscuits and gravy or all you can eat pancakes; all you can eat pancakes or biscuits and gravy. They put a price on each item so you can get just about any combination you want for your breakfast. It's all good and you
can eat all you want very reasonably. After returning to the trailer and getting cleaned up, we drove down to the main drag in Branson. Boy, they were right about the traffic! Bumper to bumper all the way to downtown. We didn't get out in the downtown area of shops and a mall along the river but made plans to come back tomorrow to check it out. We came back to the park to attend the Heartland Owners roundtable discussions of problems and issues about our trailers. This was moderated by Jim Beletti and one of the Heartland Area sales managers, Tim Koffman. All of our issues and questions were answered. Is there another manufacturer that allows their owners to meet and gripe about their trailers and the issues get fed back to the factory? I don't know of one....

After this session, I stayed for the Weigh-It session with Stacey Frank. He was very informative and it was interesting to hear. I plan to get a tire pressure monitiring system before we go on the road full time.

After that, Dee and I listened to the Geeks On Tour session. They told us about the Google Picasa photo image software. I listened for about 45 minutes but realized that the laptop belongs to Dr. Merritt, so I probably shouldn't add any software without permission. We will get our own laptop before we leave and I'll add it to that one. Picasa seems to be a very easy way to improve and catalog the images we take.

We returned to the trailer to shower and clean up for the Dixie Stampede show. We started to leave the park about 3:45 so we'd be there for the show to start at 5. We all arrived with no problem in vans furnished by the KOA and some rental vans that Heartland paid for. The show began with a juggler/magician that was a very good act. Then we all went upstairs for the main show. We went up with Jim and Sheila Gratz and Ricky and Dee, but another couple that is with the Heartland rally somehow got in line with us and because of a mistake in seating, Ricky and Dee had to sit in another row. The show takes pains to give out a certain number of numbered seat tickets to fit into each row and they try to keep all parties in a group together, but since there were over 120 in our group, it was impossible to keep all of us together. Ricky and Dee said their seats were all right but they sat next to a lady that just couldn't bring herself to eat with her fingers. Everything that is served is "finger food"; a Cornish game hen, a piece of roasted potato and an ear of corn was served. No eating utensils are furnished so this lady had to go without food. The show was great with lots and lots of livestock and tricks performed by the characters. It's amazing how close they can get the horses to come to the corners of the arena. Our seats were close to the entry doors for the actors and characters, so we got much closer than normal to the animals. We saw the Dixie Stampede in Pigeon Forge and the show was similar. This one used longhorn cattle while the one in PF used buffalo. All-in-all a very good show and worth every penny of the money. After the show we got on another van and returned to the park. Everyone drifted back to the rally hall where we sat around and visited with friends throughout the night. I guess it was around 11 when we got back to the trailer.

Another fun night in Branson!