Our first visitor!

Well, we've had our first official visitor to Branson. My mom came to visit last weekend. She flew Allegiant Air out of Phoenix for $108 ROUND TRIP. If you find the right dates, you can find flights between Springfield (30 mins away) and Phoenix or Las Vegas for as low as $29 each way. They have some rigid schedules, but even if you don't time it right, tickets should be available for less than $200 round trip.

We found downtown Springfield, which is where the Missouri Univ. campus is...it was a breath of fresh air. One way streets, lofts, little cafes and stuff...it was like a real city. In Branson, we spent a lot of time at the Landing, which is where all of the new restaurants and shopping are. It's a pretty cool place with a lot of good options for dinner and drinks. Saturday night we went to Ernie Bigg's dueling piano bar, which was a lot of fun. Very loud, and a lot of foul language, which was also refreshing.

The weather was nice while she was here...it was in the high 40's - 50's during the days, which is not bad for January. Then it cooled down on Tuesday, and today it's back up in the 60's.

By our calculations, there are plenty of open weekends for trips to Branson, and if you are creative with Allegiant Air, you can get here pretty cheap.

We're also trying to look at some dates to head back west, either to California or Vegas or both...we'll keep you posted!