The Keeter Center BRUNCH!!

That list you have of the best places ever to eat, like Nick Russell has on his Gypsy Journal website?  Add to it the Sunday brunch at the College of the Ozarks Keeter Center restaurant.  It was amazing!!  The building alone is worth the visit, but the food, all prepared and served by the working college students, is outstanding!!

 The dining room looks pretty elegant, but there's no need to dress up.  In the event it's NOT raining, you can even sit on the patio for lunch or brunch with an awesome view of the Ozarks and the campus below.

Here's that copper ceiling again, as Tom contemplates how full he is.  They have a pasta bar with their homemade pasta, a breakfast bar with biscuits and gravy, a salad bar with everything grown in their garden and an entree bar with chicken florentine, veracruz snapper, pork with blueberry barbecue sauce and vegetables (also grown on the college grounds).

To add to all that, they have a waffle bar with every kind of topping, and this BIG BEAUTIFUL HAM!!!  I could have eaten the entire thing, it was THAT good.  Smoked to perfection in an upright smoker in their well-equiped kitchen, and raised on their hog farm, this was the best piece of meat I think I've eaten in my life!!!  I just can't say enough about how sweet and tender it was!

To top off your brunch they had this amazing dessert table with everything homemade, from cookies to candy to flan, and don't forget all the cakes, bread pudding, rice krispie treats, pies and lemon bars. At about $25.00 each, you could easily get your monies worth.  This was uptown San Francisco-type gourmet food.   Delicious with a capital "D"!!

Totally stuffed and trying not to groan too loud, I waddled out to the car, where for the first time since we've been here, it was raining enough to be a bother.  Not far down the street is Branson Landing, home of a huge outdoor mall with a Bass Pro store just waiting for us!!  This was the beginning of my downfall!!  Stocked up on T-shirts, a machete for chopping down those annoying trees that are too close to my rig, a leatherman tool and an umbrella (because my other 6 are at home), we went three doors down when I realized my keys were gone!!!  My CAR keys, that start the Jeep we drove here in!!!  I panicked ... Tom and Barbara were calm and cool ... "Do you have AAA?"  Yes ... but of course I don't have another key.  We caught Security walking by, but they weren't nearly as freaked out as I was about the situation!!  We walked back to Bass Pro, where the cashier said she DID find some keys and turned them in to Customer Service.  Thank the Lord ... they were mine!!  I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.  I've lost my keys before, but in my house ... not 1500 miles away in a store at the mall!!!

Even though we were stuffed to the gills, THAT deserved some comfort food ... and what could be better than Blue Belle Ice Cream, Barbara's favorite!!  Some Happy Trails made me happy again!!

Here's a shot of this beautiful outdoor mall that I will now remember forever ... where it rained the entire time we were here.  We looked for a couple of caches, but they had been removed.  Juggling bags, my camera and an umbrella while I checked for caches on my phone didn't work out so well.

In the middle is a courtyard right next to the river with a fountain spouting water into the sky.  The cold rain falling into the warm river water made for a layer of fog that was a beautiful backdrop for what was to come.  As music played, the water danced and flames shot into the air.

It was a beautiful show that runs every hour on the hour, even with only ten of us watching.  Thanks to Tom, we had seats under a small overhang to keep us semi-dry for the entire performance.

Even the people in the houses on the hill were watching.  As the rain continued, we walked back to Bass Pro where I purchased two carabiners that will lock my keys securely on my purse or backpack. Sheesh!!!!  I don't want THAT to happen again!!!

Today we will spend an hour or so getting our free lunch so we can get a chuck wagon dinner at a discount.  You know the routine, it's a sales pitch!!  Being a Thousand Trails member, I didn't qualify, but then neither did Barbara and Tom because they had just been 18 months earlier (and they keep records!!)  No problem, there's always a sales pitch SOMEWHERE!!  So it's a hotel deal instead of RV parking, which just thrilled Barbara!!  She gets to put the salesman through his paces, increasing his skills to the max before she says "NO"!!  Then we get our dinner tickets and head off into the sunset!!