My travel journal tells me that after leaving Six Flags that Sunday afternoon, we had our first experience at a coffee chain called SCOOTERS where our drinks were screwed up and Henry had to jump through verbal hoops trying to explain the mishap to the guy at window who kept saying, “Yes” when Henry read back our orders and Henry was like, “No what I’m saying is that these are not that” and it was very awkward but finally he had us pull over and then another guy brought us the correct drinks which were actually very good so no hate to SCOOTERS. Also I like how they tell you to “SCOOT ON AROUND” after you place the order. It’s the little things you guys.

My travel journal also tells me that sometime after this, Chooch yelled to Henry from the backseat, “I’m actually curious how you’re always chewing something. We haven’t even stopped anywhere in a while so what could you possibly be eating?!”

Answer: a hard licorice candy.

Then we stopped at Uranus Fudge which has expanded into much more of a tourist trap since we were last there. Now they have all kinds of photo ops set up, an ice cream shop, a sideshow museum…I certainly don’t remember any of this from 2019, just that the fudge store had TRUMP candy and I was repulsed. As one should be. The only way I would ever buy Trump-themed candy is if he one day chokes on a butterscotch and dies – I’d happily buy a commemorative bag of those sweet saviors.

The lady at the sideshow shop won us over with her charlatan act and we ended up paying $18 (total not each!) to enter the museum which was mostly just a bunch of jars of animals floating in formaldehyde. :(

Left the fudge store unimpressed. I did buy a postcard there for Alyson though because who better to send a postcard to from Uranus?? I have to note that I came prepared this time with a sheet of postcard stamps.

#dorkalert

Couldn’t leave without partaking in this photo op.

We made it to Branson sometime around 6:00 I would say, checked into our hotel (Grandview) which was the same one we stayed at in 2019. It was a decent enough hotel. Very quiet and that’s all I really care about to be honest. I mean, I want it to be clean too! But silence is key.

For being a Sunday in a tourist town, most of the restaurants closed around 7pm so our options were pretty much pizza or GTFO. We found a place called PAPPO’S in downtown Branson and it ended up being such a vibe. This was basically the start of a week of referencing our waiter – TRUMAN. I keep wanting to call him Landon for some reason. He was Blake-ish in that he talked like he was sleepy/high, and he was wearing some great jewelry. Every time he came to our table, I would just stare at his hands because of his accessories.

Truman was very patient while Henry and I hemmed and hawed over our flight choices and had to keep going to the bar to get answers to our questions – they had a QR code that brought up their beer list but it was just the names of the beers and not the types???

My favorite was Monk’s Communion – as soon as Truman reported that it was a Belgian I yelled, “my favorite!” And he said in a very surfer manner, “Let’s do it!” But disclaimer, he said that after EVERYTHING. Chooch jokingly replayed one of the scenes the next day: “Can we have more napkins?”

“Let’s do it!” And then he never brought the napkins.

We were flipping out because after this we kept seeing so many references to Truman. Street names, shopping plaza names, a LAKE. Then I realized, “Oh it’s because Harry S Truman was from Missouri.” LOL. I wonder if Truman’s parents were presidential history buffs??!! Is he distantly related to Harry Truman??? I should have asked this when I left a Google review of PAPPO’S and specifically called out Truman for amplifying our experience to god tier lol. Someone from PAPPO’S replied and said “good job Truman!” MAYBE IT WAS TRUMAN.

Got a stain immediately.

Two downsides: the veggie sandwich I was eyeing couldn’t be done because they didn’t have eggplant anymore. UGH. So I got a regular veggie sandwich. It was ok but a lot smaller than I anticipated which sucked because I had already promised half of it to Chooch in exchange for some of his white pizza which came with chicken and Truman was like “Uhhhh….” but it was Chooch’s fault for not reading the menu!

Food mishaps aside, the pizza was actually good (once the chicken was picked off) – I loved the crust, my sandwich was good – I loved the bread, the beer was REALLY good – I liked all of my picks, and the vibe was on point – mostly because I was obsessed with Truman lol.

I forgot his name the next day though briefly and accidentally called him Sherman, which made me ask Chooch if he remembered our server Sherman from the first time we went to Dollywood and he got really annoyed.

“How could I forget? You bring him up literally every time we visit Bill.”

Lol. True. Sherman really impacted our lives.

After dinner, we walked along this – lake? It was right next to the shopping center where PAPPO’S resides. It was a nice little walk but chooch was pissed because there was a geocache he couldn’t access because some creepy guy was “fishing” where he needed to go.

Since Henry and I had each had a flight of beer, Chooch was our DD. This was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip – Chooch taking us on a frantic joy ride thought Branson at night. Henry was fuming from the backseat while I was flat out cackling in the passenger seat. Chooch is so scary.

I made him take us to Hurts Donut, a small Missouri chain that I had known about from my days of following A Beautiful Mess because I believe it started in their hometown of Springfield.

We took them back to the hotel and sampled some before leaving again. I believe we got:

– glazed old fashioned with chocolate drizzle?

– coconut with coconut cream in the middle

– Tang!!

– a cake donuts with sprinkles and a frosted animal cookie, this was my favorite. It tasted like childhood.

– churro, second fave

– chocolate covered cherry. This was chooch’s and I didn’t try it.

Then we walked up the street to one of the many amusement parks so Chooch could get a +1 on an SBF Visa Spinner (thoosie lingo, nbd). I think I already mentioned this but there was a really pretty hotel at the top of the street called Hotel Victorian and Chooch, who hated our hotel just because the gym sucked, said, “Just a reminder that if we stayed at the Victorian, we wouldn’t have had to walk up this hill.” This was probably the 5th time that Chooch had thrown Henry’s poor hotel picking skills in his face and we had only been in Branson for about 4 hours at that point. Henry was ready to slug him lol. Ok fine I was also contributing to the Victorian narrative lol. I was obsessed with the huge chandelier in the lobby that you could see from the road. The only thing our lobby had was a Dolly’s Stampede ticket counter and a bland front desk clerk who sat there with headphones on all night.

$13 for this stupid credit. They at least sent it around about 15 times though. That’s 14 times too many in opinion.

Then we went back to the not-Victorian, watched some Game Show Network (I liked it better when it showed all old shows, not all of these modern day remakes!!!) and went to bed. We had a LONG day ahead of us, lol ugh.

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