The Condrays: Vacation

Below is a quite detailed account of our vacation day-by-day. I completely understand if you don't choose to read it. Just scroll past all of the text and look at the pics if you want. Or if you decide to read it...thank you! I just wanted a record of our vacation, and as I have said before, this is my online scrapbook and journal, so I apologize for the lengthy post. A photo explanation: Cary and I really enjoy a lot of the same things and find the same things comical. I suppose that is a good thing since we are married to one another. Anyway, there are a couple of pictures of some signs that made us laugh. Also, I tried to post other pics in the order that they were taken and/or mentioned in the text.

Wednesday. We left Conway a few minutes before 10 Wednesday morning. After a quick stop in Harrison to pick up lunch at Quizno's, we ate on the road and arrived in Eureka Springs around 2:00. Blake & Kristen's wedding wasn't until 7:30 so we had plenty of time for the beginnings of our R&R. We checked into the Santa Fe Cottage at Oakcrest Cottages, unloaded our bags, snacks and such, and then just lay around for a while. Cary watched TV and I took a little nap...it was quite relaxing. We got all gussied up for the wedding and headed out. The wedding was so sweet and the Thorncrown Chapel is absolutely breathtaking. The bride and groom didn't look too shabby either. After the preacher (Cary) officiated the 9-minute ceremony (he said a LOT in those 9 minutes), the good LORD decided we needed rain...lots of rain. So, for about 10-15 minutes it came down by the bucketful while the bride, groom and family were having pictures made. Dinner followed at Pizza Hut with the bride & groom, some family and close friends. It was a great time and we were pleased to get to take part in it. Thanks Blake & Kristen!

Thursday. We left for Branson, MO around 11 and headed for the Branson Cafe in old downtown Branson. This is an old hole-in-the-wall restaurant with home cooking that Cary and I first dined at on our honeymoon in 2002. We just had to return since we enjoyed it so much the first time. As usual the food was good and the downtown area was packed with tourists. We left there in a hurry to make it to the Hughes Brothers Theatre to see SIX. The show was phenomenal to say the least. It is six of ten brothers that harmonize and make quite unusual noises with their voices. There are no musical instruments or drums in use. Nothing besides live human voices, yet sometimes you would swear you are hearing an orchestra. It was absolutely amazing. We bought all three of their CDs (gospel, rock & Christmas) and plan to go back and see them in the future. We drove just a block over from the theatre to tour the Titanic museum where we touched an actual iceberg, heard stories from survivors, and learned quite a bit about the construction and demise of the Titanic. It was fun AND educational. From there we went to Red Lobster for dinner and I ran into a sorority sister of mine. Hadn't seen her since college - small world. Thank you Cary for sacrificing to eat at Red Lobster! It was a long day and turned our to be our busiest day all week, but we had a great time. We settled back in at the cottage after a stop for ice cream and enjoyed some relaxing time together.

Friday. A lunch ride on the Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway started our day. It was the most relaxing thing we did all week other than sleep. We were served what we thought was going to be a light lunch of chicken salad and fruit. But with the quantity of the salad and fruit, the tea, and the dessert and coffee that followed, we were stuffed. It was an hour ride through the Ozarks and beautiful scenery. It was a very touristy thing to do, but what an experience. To my knowledge, it was the first time I had ever been on a train. The food was great, the view was amazing and the company...well, I can't say enough about the company. Our clothing supply was running a little low, so we spend some time at the Laundromat and met a nice Christian couple from Kansas City, KS. He liked to talk, so we let him. We heard war stories, church stories and all sorts of things. It made the visit to the Laundromat a little more fun...if doing laundry can be fun. From there we walked all the downtown area and went in and out of several shops until Cary had his fill of looking at "junk" (I never get tired of it). Since we were still full from lunch on the train, we had a very light dinner at a restaurant call Local Flavor. Don & Elaine, the owners of Oakcrest Cottages, have quite a movie stash. We checked out a couple of action/adventure movies we had not seen, dropped them off in our cottage and headed out again. Our goal on this outing was to find a place where we could check email since there is no WI-FI at the cottage. We had the laptop with us and were told of a couple of places in town that had free WI-FI. Both of those were a bust so we just drown around town searching for an unsecure network that we could use. Long story short, we ended up parking in the Motel 6 parking lot and accessing their network long enough to check our email. I laughed so hard. If you can be redneck while using a laptop, then we were definitely redneck. We wrapped up the day with a stop for more ice cream then back to the cottage and watched a movie.

Saturday. We slept in, as was the case every morning, then went downtown for a walk, to visit a couple of shops we missed the day before, and to eat a light lunch. We didn't want to over-stuff ourselves because we already had a dinner planned that evening at the Rowdy Beaver (steak, fish & seafood). One of the shops we went into had been featured on HGTV before. It was metal sculptures and the artist and his wife lived on site. Cary was visiting with the wife and got some bass fishing tips. You just never know what sort of people you are going to run into. Another quick parking stop to check email and then we were back to the cottage for some rest and downtime out of the heat before dinner. Per Cary, the Rowdy Beaver "wasn't so rowdy" at least not at the time we went...maybe it gets rowdy later in the evening. Cary had a Rowdy Burger and I had a Chicken Ranch Sandwich mostly because we didn't want to pay $15-$25 for a more formal entree. Now, don't get me wrong, the food was good but they were just really proud of it. Bowling in Berryville at the Town & Country Lanes was our evening activity. I guess you could say we exhausted all the fun in Eureka Springs. Well, that and everything in Eureka closes at 5:00 except the restaurants, so we didn't have much choice but to go to Berryville. We returned to the cottage around 9:00 for our last night. We were there about 30 seconds when Cary announced that he needed ice cream just one more time and since it was our last night and all I agreed to go with him, but not have any ice cream. You can guess what happened when we got there. Yes, we BOTH got ice cream. Then back to the cottage.

Sunday. Breakfast at 8:00 a.m. at the Smokehouse...home of the world's largest biscuit. They have been mentioned in the New York Times. I must admit, I doubted, I was a sceptic...until my biscuit and gravy was served. That thing was larger than most dessert plates I've seen. One would serve a family! It wasn't a biscuit, it was a LOAF OF BREAD! Our plan was to go from there to Thorncrown Chapel for their morning worship services. Well, the Toyota died on us a couple of times just as we were trying to head toward the Chapel, so once we got it running good, we opted to leave it running and just head on home. We stopped to pick up Rascal in Bee Branch, then were happy to get home around noon.

Congratulations Blake & Kristen!