Silver Dollar City Campsite Cabins

Sunday evening we met Becky, Kevin, Dayna and Peter at the Silver Dollar Wilderness Campground in Branson, Missouri.  The campground and cabins were very quiet over Christmas.  We felt we were the only ones here.  We made a provisioning run and tried to buy enough food for the week.  It was a trick finding places to stow it in the little cabin!

Here is a video overview of the campground and cabin…

Christmas morning was special in many ways, but one you can see is the lot of us in matching PJ’s.  A first time for me!

Silver Dollar City is an amusement park with a very laid back, Christian feel.  The old steam train is a fun ride through the woods, and stopped on one place while an “old timer” read the story of the birth of Christ, and emphasized the meaning of Christmas.  Nice references to God are all over.  It’s done tastefully and quite refreshing in this commercial world!  Not that they are non-commercial!! They claim to have more lights than any other park, with over 6.5 million lights up this year.  EVERYTHING is lit up!  I’ll admit to being blown away with the gorgeous lights.   I tried taking pictures, but there is no way to capture the feeling of all those lights!

During the day, the park is themed as a small city in the 1880’s.  There are craftsmen working – blacksmiths, glassblowers, woodworkers, etc.  Except if it is too cold some of those are frozen out…  but there are tons of things to see and do.  Other parts of the park feature amusement park rides – several awesome roller coasters in particular.  One called the Time Traveler may be the coolest coaster I’ve ever done!

Wednesday we spent the day in the park, and went back to the cabin for dinner.  After the grandkids went to bed, we left Cherryl to watch them and went back to the park to hit the more advanced coasters.  The cold and the beginning rain drove most of the sane people out of the park, so we had no waiting in lines that had been terribly long during the day.  Most roller coasters are more fun in the dark, but when you add cold and rain the effect is quite dramatic!  We had a great time even though we ended up soaked!  I appreciated that the rain drove out people getting in the way of my photos, and the wet pavement made for great reflections.

Thursday we attended Dolly Parton’s Stampede – kind of a rodeo where they serve you dinner while you watch!  They did a great job of feeding 1,100 people simultaneously while we watched trick horseback riding!  The food was pretty good, and the show was really amazing.  Backdrops were magical, a small ice rink dropped down from the ceiling for a mini-ice show, and there was even a whole nativity scene enacted.  Good Job, Dolly!

The later it got in the week, the colder it got!  Friday we were back at Silver Dollar City, but most of the rides were closed because it was only 32 degrees!  We were glad that wasn’t our only day there…  Here is a cute family with frozen noses!  We’ve had a great Christmas Week with these kids and grandkids!