Back to the 50's

We left Tim's old home town of Des Moines (1950 to 1977) and drove 240 miles to the Twin Cities area on Thursday, June 20.  The Twin Cities area will be home to us for the 8 days.  The first  four days we'll stay at Dakota Meadows RV Park in Prior Lake next to the Mystic Lake Casino and Hotel.  We had a very nice back-in site reserved that was very easy to get Big Red into.

The main reason we came to the Twin Cities was to attend the Back to the 50's http://msrabacktothe50s.com/  40th anniversary car show.  The show is held at the Minnesota State Fair Ground in St. Paul.  This year they announced a record 12,033 show cars registered.  We haven't heard what the spectator attendance was, but in previous years it has been over 125,000 people.  It takes 2,000 volunteers to work the show.  Let's just say it is MASSIVE!

Entry to fair grounds

We attended two days, Friday and Saturday taking over 500 photos of cars and people.  How do we present these in this blog post without overwhelming some readers and boring others?  So we'll post just a few pictures now and figure out a way later to make available more pictures to those readers who are interested.  We were overwhelmed and overloaded by attending the show.  Too much to see.  The following are a sample of what we saw.  This show has no judging.  If you can get it there, you can show it.  There were vehicles of many makes (predominantly American) and types and in different states of condition.  As long as the vehicle was originally built prior to 1965, you can show it.  Some were meticulously restored and others only slightly resembled the original make and model.  Beautifully painted or no paint didn't matter.  If you bring it, you can show it.  This made the show very interesting.

Meticulously restored 40's classic

Nor so restored classic Pontiac

Beautiful street rod

This pickup does run

A nice 1062 Avanti (Studebaker).  A car ahead of its time

Cars from the wing or jet styling era like this Buick LeSabre

Thunderbirds from the 1st four generations like this 1962

Linda next to 40's style street rod

Very rare Studebaker Champion convertible circa 1950

Two tone painted street rod

Rat Rod (imitates or exaggerates hot rods of 40's, 50's, or 60's)

Cute "American" street rod

50's & 60's Corvettes

The original SUV, Chevy 3100

Wow woodies

1950 Ford like Linda's parents owned

Pontiac Bonneville (they don't style them like this anymore)

Ford Anglia (made in U.K.) dragster

1963 Buick Riviera like Tim's father owned

2 story rat rod

Wonderful Corvair, the car Ralph Nader killed

100,000 plus spectators looking at over 12,000 cars

1964 Chrysler Imperial similar to Tim's father's 1965

Gorgeous street rod in restored Chevy flatbed hauler

Slammed street rods

 The above vehicles are only a small sampling of what we saw.  The sign on the last car sums it up.

We attended the show on Friday and Saturday.  After we left the show on Friday it looked like bad weather was approaching.  We drove to a pizza place near Minneapolis that Tim had read about.  The wait time was 70 minutes.  Rain and wind came while we waited in the very small  entry way.  Then the power went out.

Tim ran to the car (luckily we had our rain ponchos) and picked up Linda.  We drove toward the RV park and ate at a local restaurant.

Saturday morning we drove back to the car show.  On the way we saw some results from the storm.

Trees blown over and uprooted

Glad we didn't own this house

Fortunately, there was no damage seen at the car show on Saturday.  We walked and walked and saw more cars and lots of people.  After Saturday our eyes couldn't take anymore cars, so we did something different on Sunday.  We'll tell you more in our next post.

Old home town

A 400 miles plus drive was facing us on Tuesday from the Branson area to Des Moines, IA.  We started early, broke up the day with frequent rest stops, bought some fuel and arrived at the RV park near Des Moines about 7:30 p.m.  By the time we changed sites (couldn't fit in the first site assigned) and got settled it was 8:45.  We were hungry and wondered if the restaurant owned by an elementary and high school classmate of Tim's would be open.  Tim made the call and confirmed they were open.  We arrived at 9:15 just before the kitchen closed and placed our order.

Tim by restaurant sign in Des Moines

Chuck's is a place Tim's family went to about every Friday night for years.  It was owned by a grade school and high school classmate of Tim's, Linda Bisignano.  It was great to see Linda after all these years.  Tim thinks it has been at least 30 years since he was back in Des Moines.

Linda T., Linda B.,  & Tim at Chuck's Restaurant in Des Moines

We did a drive by our alma mater, Drake University, where we met in 1970.

Drake Stadium, home of the famous Drake Relays

On Wednesday, June 20th we went to the Iowa Cubs baseball game.  It was a beautiful day with low humidity and nice temp.  The Cubs were playing a doubleheader, because of earlier rain outs.  Most of the midwest has been drenched this spring and so far this summer.  The Cubs were called the Oaks when we lived in town.  Over the years they've been AAA affiliates for various major league teams.  Tony Larussa from Tampa played and managed at the Oaks, before hitting it big as a major league manager.

Tim by Iowa Cubs mascot

At the entrance to the remodeled stadium were cute statues.  The remodel was well done.

Statues at the entrance to Iowa Cubs stadium

More statues

Nice statue by stadium

View of stands behind home plate

Principal Park is the name of Iowa Cubs stadium

The dressing rooms for the teams and umpires are located behind the left field wall accessed by doors through the wall.

Left field wall with doors accessing dressing rooms

The real Iowa Cubs mascot came over to see a couple of old people visiting from Florida.

Iowa Cubs mascot

We didn't stay for the 2nd game of the doubleheader, because we were to drive to Twin Cities the next day.  We drove by the Iowa Capitol building, which is famous for its gold dome.  In the late afternoon sunshine it was brilliant.  The building is truly beautiful.

Iowa Capitol building with gold dome

On the way back to the RV park, all Tim could think about were Maid-Rite sandwiches (http://maid-rite.com/).  These sandwiches are described as loose meat.  They are addictive.  We found a store and Tim got a sack of 5 Rites for 10 bucks.  Tim devoured 3 Rites at the blink of an eye.  He did have enough restraint to save and freeze 2 for his brother.

 The sandwich ready to be eaten.

Maid-Rite loose meat sandwich

We got back to the RV park and prepared for our drive to the Twin Cities the next morning.

Parking challenge, throwed rolls, war, and third time is the charm

After visiting the two caves south of Harrison on Saturday, June 15th we collected Big Red and drove the short hour to the Branson area.  Our next stay would be three nights at the Baxter Park Campground (Corps of Engineers) on Table Rock Lake.  A rain storm was coming in, so we now hurried to get there.  We traveled a hilly, curvy 5 mile road, which dead ended to the campground.  Check-in was smooth and friendly.  We proceeded to our reserved site which was a back-in right on the lake.  Four challenges were immediately presented:
1.  interior 1 way road was narrow.
2.  the back-in had large landscape stones on each side to avoid.
3.  across from the site was a drainage ditch.
4.  marking the drainage ditch was a post.

Let's just say this didn't look good.  As much as Tim tried he couldn't get Big Red's 45 feet to bend enough.  The nice check-in lady could see our distress.  She had us hop in her car as we scouted for a useable site.  It's the weekend, so our options were limited, but we found a nice site overlooking the lake at the top of a small hill.  It worked great and was easy to get Big Red backed in.

Site at Baxter Park campground overlooking Table Rock Lake

We only got a few sprinkles and were able to settle into our site.  The sprinkles were a precursor of rain to come.  It rained the next two nights.  We've seen to Branson twice before. Outdoor theater is one of our favorite things to do when we travel.  This time we purchased tickets for the Shepherd of the Hills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd_of_the_Hills) drama for the Saturday night performance.  It took about 30 minutes to drive from the campground to the outdoor theater.  Arriving at the parking lot, we were greeted by an attendant advising us the performance had been cancelled because of impending bad weather.  30 minutes later we were back at the campground and it rained.  STRIKE ONE.

Father's Day, June 16 was celebrated by phone calls from our two kids families.  It was great to talk to them.  We celebrated an early Father's Day on Saturday, June 8th before we left town.

One of the three Lambert's Cafes (http://www.throwedrolls.com/) is located north of Branson in Ozark, MO.  We decided to go early and maybe we'd miss some of the Father's Day crowd.  We arrived about 2 p.m., but our plan didn't quite work.....70 minute wait.

Linda coming back to car after putting our name in

We spent some time waiting in a nearby antique mall and looking around the area.











Finally our name was called and we were ready to eat.  Tim had fasted for 24 hours preparing for the meal.

Tim ready for "throwed rolls"

As soon as we were seated the guy came from the kitchen with the rolls cart ready to throw.  Tim catches one of the first rolls throwed from the cart from about 20 feet away.

Linda enjoying hot throwed roll

Our meals were served shortly after.  They were huge as we had remembered.

Tim's center cut ham with carrots, mashed potatoes and black eyed peas and throwed roll

Tim gorging himself

After stuffing ourselves at Lambert's Cafe, Tim wanted to visit a Civil War battlefield nearby: http://www.nps.gov/wicr/index.htm.  Wilson's Creek was a very early battle in the Civil War and a Southern victory.  The North found out early the war was not going to be a walk-over.

Tim in front of Visitor Center

Canon on battlefield

An almost 5 mile driving tour takes you through the stages of the battle, which had its ebbs and flows.  Signs along the way providing information of the progress of the battle.  Tim enjoyed the tour.  Linda endured it.

We had our tickets from the previous night's cancelled outdoor drama, so we drove back to Branson for the show.  This time we got into the show.  Just before intermission, the rain came. STRIKE TWO.
Back in the car and to the campground drenched with our tickets in hand.  It rained and stormed through the night.  We'll try on Monday night to attend the drama again on our last night in the Branson area.

THIRD TIME IS THE CHARM

Monday night turned out to be a beautiful night.  The show went on as scheduled and we enjoyed it.

Driving to the Shepherd of the Hills outdoor drama

Pre-show ceremony

Actors on horses

Tuesday, June 18th would be a long 400 mile drive to Des Moines, IA.